Emerging Illusion blocks

from Why We Quilt

This month in the Dutch circle of the do. Good Stitches quilting bee, we are sewing string blocks for our collaborative charity quilt. The block style comes from the book Why We Quilt by Thomas Knauer. It features 1” wide diagonal stripes on low volume backgrounds, where the stripes are randomly interrupted by larger expanses of background.

Fun, straightforward and definitely scrap-friendly!

To get started I pulled green and orange string fabrics for the stripes, as instructed by our queen bee. Then I went searching for a paper large enough to cut 9” square for the foundations. I found this tracing paper (I think?) which is just large enough. But will it serve well?

Yes it does! In fact, it’s really nice to foundation paper piece with see-through paper. The pencil guidelines which I drew on one side are easily visible from both sides, as is the fabric itself. Nice!

So, that was quick! Here are my four blocks for the October bee quilt. From top left and moving clockwise, my background fabrics are Kismet dash print, White, Tarrytown Farkle Shell and a Tilda basics star print.

I love how these came out! The colors match the autumn in The Netherlands. They’ll be off in the mail soon.

Happy Weekend all.