Have you ever wanted to make a curved, pieced quilt but hesitate at the idea of matching up those odd edges? Maybe your failed attempts at inset sleeves in Home Economics class still haunt you!
There are so many cute curved pieced quilts out there right now. Have you seen any of Latifah Saafir’s Clamshell quilts? These are popping up everywhere, and I think they are so fun and modern and a great way to learn and master curved piecing by the time you’re done!
Here’s another simple curved piecing quilt that is a free pattern online at https://sewkindofwonderful.com/pages/free-patterns. My friend Sue is teaching this as a class on the 24th of this month, if you are local, more information here: http://www.auntmarysquiltshop.com/Classes.html
So, let’s get started! Maybe by starting with a gentle curve you can build up some confidence:) I used my “Quick Curve Ruler” to cut the curves; you can use any curved ruler, but a lot of quilters already have this one because the clever girls over at Sew Kind of Wonderful keep giving us reasons to buy it!
I cut these three fabrics ten inches wide and the white one is about thirteen inches wide. Using the ruler, I cut the light green sliver piece 1”, the darker green 1.5”, and the melon color was a 10” square that I curved on one end. I just used the ruler to hollow out a 10” curve from the white piece… none of this was an exact science… in case you hadn’t noticed! Haha!
Next, take each piece and fold it in half to find the center. Snip the tiniest corner off both the inside and outside of the curve on each piece. This way, you can match up the curves at the midpoint easily (because we don’t use pins, we just wing it ;).
The important thing to remember when sewing curves is that the concave side is always on the bottom towards the feed-dogs. An easy way to remember this is to look for the piece that most resembles a C (for concave) and put that piece on the bottom, then flip the next piece right side together on top of it...the two curves should sweep away from each other.
Start your two pieces by lining them up just at the starting edge, you won’t need to fuss with the rest just yet, we will get to that little by little.
Just focus on about the half-inch right in front of the foot. As you sew, pull the two edges together just before they go under the foot.
As you get closer to the center clip points, you can gauge how close you are to matching up. Sometimes you will have to give the top piece or the bottom piece a gentle tug to get the pieces to match. Don’t worry if the first couple are off, you will get better at gauging how much tension to give the top or bottom piece as you go through this process a few times.
Once all the pieces are sewn, you can press the seams out flat to the inside or the outside of the curve; it doesn’t usually matter.
I then used my triangle ruler to cut the melon shape and added white background triangles to fill it out. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with this yet… I may make a bunch more and do a picnic blanket or something! Wouldn’t that be cute?! Anyway, once it’s quilted, I will add the black buttons (seeds), but this gives you an idea.