Recently I’ve come across stunning Fine Line quilts by Kathleen Loomis. I was inspired. I needed to try the technique. I have always been attracted to free form quilt but just couldn’t see myself making one. You see, I like numbers, order. Anything free form, or wonky, just seemed too, well… disorderly. But then I saw these Fine Line quilts, and thought – well, that’s just slashing and sewing. How difficult could it be. So I tried once… then once more (I will show you those in a second). Kathleen Loomis posted a little tutorial here.

But then I thought – if I can do straight lines, why not curved. I had some bias tape left over from the Flutters quilt, I cut it into 1 in wide strips; then I took some  linen, 4 different colors to be exact, cut up some squares and slashed away. I figured if I use a 1 in bias tape and make 1/4 in seams, I would not get in trouble with the curves. And here is what I ended up with…

I didn’t use any templates, as you can see, I just put the 4 squares next to each other and slashed curves. I wanted them to be nearly circles, but I didn’t even care if the edges meet. The first square was tricky, and there was a lot of ripping and false starts, but once I got a hang of it, it was all smooth.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the progress, because I really just wanted to finish it, and I really wanted to finish it before the Spring break, so I didn’t take any pictures. I didn’t finish it before the break, but I did as soon as we got back. Yesterday.

The quilt is about 21 in square. I didn’t know if it would work, so I wanted something smaller. Initially I thought I would make it into a pillow, but it looks so nice hanging on my wall, that I just made it into a mini quilt.

Recently I noticed I like my quilt fairly densely quilted. The distance between these lines was less than 1/2 in. Quilting linen is a bit tricky as it is stretchy, but all in all not too bad, it is a small quilt after all. I would like to do a bigger version of this… You can easily slash the square multiple times, making concentric or intersecting circles. That would be fun!

OK, and now to those other two “things” I made. I quilted them, but not finished, because I didn’t quite know what to do with them. Minis? Pillows (they are just about the right size)? Or, could I make a few more of these, in different colors and them put them all together in a big quilt – something like “quilt as you go”? I thought that would be fun – you cannot really make a big quilt using this technique – but since I was not planning this initially, and I did not leave any top fabric or batting selvadge, could it be even done? I am not sure, I never made a “quilt as you go quilt” even though I like the basic idea.