Fun & Done Quilt As You Go

This is an amazing new technique for quilt as you go. I just purchased one of these rulers to try, and I think I am going to have a lot of fun with it. Some of your local quilt shops should have this in stock now, as it was a featured product at the Quilt Market that most of the shops attended. Otherwise you can go to their website and see some of the patterns she has to go with it and purchase the ruler at:

Bayside Quilting.

I am so intrigued by this method, so I have been surfing the Web looking for patterns and ideas. Well I came across a wonderful blog called Colleen's Quilting Journey. Colleen has taken this a step further and has used these plastic templates to practice her free motion and other quilting skills. She has done a series of 8 posts about this process. Here are a couple of her pieces that I am sure she will put into a whole quilt when completed:

Isn't that cool? And now she will have a quilt when she is finishing practicing. The possibilities just boggle my mind. Thank you Colleen for sharing this with us. Please go to Colleen's blog for her great posts about this at:
Colleen's Quilting Journey.


For patterns available for this technique go to:

Prairie Sky Quilting

But let that only be a beginning. You could use this technique for so much more like Colleen did. Please share with us any new ideas you have for using this template.  You could even make blocks different sizes using other rulers you own once you got the technique down.  Please let me hear from anyone who had done other things with this technique.

I personally completed one of these quilts in flannel with a scrappy back.  I made every mistake possible and will be sharing those with you at a future post.  I also found some helpful tips in putting this quilt together. 
1.  Don't use flannel on the back unless you don't mind struggling with bulk.  It is not impossible, but would be much easier in regular cotton.
2.  Use the same color on every backing piece for your first one.  This will give you much more ease of construction in that you won't be matching up corners so much.
3.  Mark your inside square on the backing piece for stitching the pieces together.  I did alot of struggling with this.
4.  Don't use polyester batting.  It will slide all over the place.  I even glue basted this, and it still moved around on me.

Come back for a construction tutorial in about the next two months.  I will do a pictorial, as I have to put one together for my guild, so I will post that here by September.