Not much in the way of April showers here on the Jersey Shore, and we could really use some, but they’re coming. It’s still chilly here, no complaints from me! We’ve been sewing up our own storm in the sewing room. We are knee deep in an initiative to make as many quilts and get them delivered to Mary’s Place by the Sea for their guests to enjoy, before our summer visitors to the shore get here. I cannot wait to brag about the beautiful work we are doing. It’s gonna be so good!

April’s challenge block is an “economy” or “square in a square block”. A widely popular quilt block during the Great Depression, there is also evidence of it being around as early as the 1800’s. It is a popular block because it uses triangles on all four sides of the center square and is a good way to use scraps. That center square is a great way to add a motif or fussy cut from favorite fabric, they also make great “I spy” quilts for kids. We took our economy blocks next level and gave them a modern makeover.

I took this image from a tutorial I was following from Diary of a Quilter, this is what a traditional economy block looks like!

Our Program (instructional) portion of the meeting this month was a fascinating demonstration by Irene, who is fairly new to our guild, but boy did she jump in and teach us something that was new to almost all of us, “no tear paper piecing”! Removing papers from foundation paper piecing projects is somewhat tedious and can be super tricky when working with tiny pieces within a design. Irene’s method uses the paper but there is no removal. Matter of fact she used the same paper template over and over to create an entire quilt. Magic, I tell you!! And she left no detail out while demonstrating to us, thank you Irene!!

There was still time for some fun show and tell too.

So MaryJane treated us to this oldie but goodie, circa 1995 with reproduction fabrics. She entered into a contest but it didn’t make the cut, boo! Entirely pieced and quilted by hand and she’s a beauty!

Back to the sewing room, thanks for reading!