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Wanted: Sampler Solutions


Zora

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Our LQS did a lot of sampler quilts for their Saturday Sampler clubs over the past several years. I have about five of these things to do, and they want "heirloom" quilting. I'm runing out of ideas, and the one I am working on now has blocks that may contain 120 pieces, many of them not recognizable as any type block in particular. Some of them are pretty, some are just chaotic. She didn't want all the blocks the same with something like a feather wreath. Somebody suggested DeLoa's sampler book. It was just a thought!

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What I have found to be helpful with samplers is to decide on a style and use it throughout the top. When I say style, I mean motifs and shapes that are used in each block to tie the sampler together.

The most common type is CCs--those continuous curves that allow you to quilt a block in one pass. If you are comfortable with the technique of quilting the piecing like that, use the CCs to quilt the smallest pieces in the block and in the larger pieces, quilt a CC with an accent. If there are florals in the fabric, the accent can be a leaf shape. In the larger blocks, stitch the CCs and fill the space in the center with a leaf shape. You can quilt the entire sampler this way, finding larger areas for leaf shapes and in really bigger areas of a block, stitch a cluster of leaves or a flower.

Another accent is a hook or a swirl to fill the space left after stitching the CCs.

If you quilt this way across, the density of the quilting will be even and pleasing. I'll see if I can find a photo or two to illustrate this.

Here is a sampler using a swirled hook and feathers here and there.

post--13461905186622_thumb.jpg

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Thanks, Linda. I will look at some of those "obnoxious" blocks again and see if that will work. I have been doing a lot of the cc's. I hadn't thought about doing the swirls to fill up the background areas. I have been mostly hung up on the small background fills..stipple, McTavishing, etc. That's what was getting boring. I'll add in some of your suggestions. Thanks.

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