Quilts by Accident

Written by Diane Harris on May 18, 2021. Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas, Inspiration, Quilt Lifestyle

A lot of the quilts I make start off by accident. That’s what happened with the Daydream sampler from Quilter’s World.

Daydream sampler from Quilter’s World,
designed and made by Carolyn Beam; quilted by Donna Smith.

I do a monthly Facebook Live for Quilter’s World.** I brainstorm a few topic ideas for each one, and together we settle on that month’s focus. A few months back, I thought it would be fun to show how I would make the Daydream sampler with lots and lots of different fabrics.

It’s a beautiful quilt as shown, made with one fabric line from Moda.* But I knew it could sport a completely different vibe if you scrapped it up. The nice people at Quilter’s World thought that was a fine idea.

I found this fabric in my stash for the borders and used it as inspiration to pull the other prints. As soon as I paired it with pinks, reds, aquas, teals, navy blues and greens, I loved it and knew I’d make the whole thing—not just the few blocks for the Live that month.

See what I mean? Quite by accident.

The same thing happened with a basic Log Cabin block a few months before that. I talked about a mystery quilt called Awash with Color that Quilter’s World had run, and used the Log Cabin from that mystery to demonstrate a few things.

My first few Log Cabins turned into a whole quilt.

And I loved the happiness of the colors and the ease of construction so much that before you know it, I had an entire quilt.

By accident.

Over the past few months, the Iowa Quilt Museum hosted an hour-long session on Tuesdays at noon with a number of well-known experts on a variety of topics. They dubbed it Virtual Iowa Quiltscape.

I was listening on a Tuesday in February, and I got so excited about string piecing that I started making some blocks right then and there. By the time it was over, I’d started a new quilt. You guessed it. By accident.

I’d had these blocks in my head for a long time. Now that I’ve made a few, I’m not sure it will hold my interest. They might go into the orphan pile that is starting to look like an entire orphanage.

But anyway, back to the Daydream sampler. I’ve made five blocks and there’s not a dud in the bunch. I quite love where it is going.

There is nice variety in the blocks so it’s holding my interest. I’m sewing from my stash. I’m not in a big hurry. It’s the best kind of sewing, even if it happened by accident.

Quilt on,