Free Wheeling Single Girl Quilt

Have you caught curve fever yet? I have it bad. Denyse Schmidt is running a sew along for one of her quilts, and it is wonderful. I love the Free Wheeling Single Girl Quilt, and when the sew along popped up in my Instagram feed, I just had to join in.

Rather than spend a lot of time agonizing over colors, I decided to go with texture. I have one quilt I made in 2004 that is pieced from homespun plaids front and back. It also has wool batting. It is the best quilt texture – floppy and loose, and sooooo comfy.

With that in mind, I dug through my stash and scrap bins, and pulled out all of my Essex linen, shot cotton, homespun plaids, and other yarn dyed fabrics. I had just a little bit lying around.

I went ahead and ordered templates from Denyse. I used to fight the urge, but when I’m not doing improv curves, templates are definitely worth it.

Piecing the arcs is fun, and you know I love digging through my stash and using the last little bit of a fabric. I’ve given myself permission on this piece to just cover the space. That means not all of my arcs have strips going in the same direction. Some are leaning over, some are totally pieced the wrong way, because I missed. And it is all okay, and it will make a super cozy quilt.

On my first group of blocks I decided to work in some of this gorgeous purple peppered cotton. These are from wideback scraps, and I have piles and piles of it.

Here are 10 blocks on the wall, waiting for their friends to arrive.

Oscar spent 1/2 of an hour just staring at them quietly. There must be something about these squircle shapes he likes.

After a while with these guys on my wall, I decided I didn’t like the purple as a background. I want my background to read as neutral.

No way will I toss the blocks, so Oscar ended up with a mini quilt just for him. I made two more blocks with a purple background, and these ones got solid pieces for the arcs. Those were two fast arcs.

I put it on the longarm, layered it with some wool batting scraps, gave it some fast, dense quilting, and tah dah! Oscar has his own special quilt. (He loves wool batting, too!) I call it the Freewheeling Devil Doggie Quilt. He snuggled right up to it immediately, and has been sleeping with it day and night. This morning was especially cute – he crawled out from under it, then stretched out on top of it and moaned. He definitely knows it is his.

This is how I have my workstation set up for this project. My new Bernina (which is absolutely fabulous), cutting table behind me, ironing station to the right, and short table of scraps to the left. I spend a few hours a day spinning around on my goofy chair. I love how the project is coming together. I hope my scrap pile is smaller when I’m finished!