Amy's quilt

I wrote yesterday about Amy Pabst, who has been corresponding with me for some time about her fine-line quilt in progress.  Shortly before Christmas she wrote to say she had made a bunch of modules, and to ask for advice about how to join them.  I gave her a couple of hints, and decided that it might be a good idea to write a more extensive tutorial to share with everybody.

I mainly thought this might be a help to Amy, but I moved too slowly.  Once this woman decides to sew, stand back!

Here's what her design wall looked like on December 3:

On December 16:

And here's her quilt top, finished on December 22:

Although it's not apparent in the full view, all of her white fabrics are striped (some are white-on-white).  The full quilt measures 63 x 70 inches.

I think this is a beautiful quilt!  It reminds me of a couple of my own quilts, which isn't surprising because Amy used them as models.  And I think I own and have used several of the same red stripe fabrics.

After she finished, Amy wrote:  "I was very surprised at how well everything fit together. I had to do a little fiddling, adding and trimming here and there, but for the most part everything ended up a good fit by what seemed like pure chance.....  I love working with small pieces, but normally I paper piece and plan and calculate everything to exact measurements. The free style construction of this quilt was brand new to me and very refreshing after all the rigid perfection of paper piecing."

Amy, I'm so glad that you made this quilt, and that you like the improvisational approach. Yes, it is a very different way to work, with very little advance planning and certainly no exact measurements, and yes, it is refreshing!  Thanks so much for sharing your photos, and I hope we'll get another look when it's all quilted.