Whiptips is an crafts advice column for readers to ask questions or offer advice by leaving your comments. View the Whiptips archive here. You can submit questions, to whiptips@gmail.com. Please include photos with your questions!

A couple weeks ago, Whiptips asked readers to send in some questions about unfinished quilt blocks. Thank you for sharing photos of your projects.

Paisley Womble’s

Shelina’s:

Weeks replies:
Below are sketches of what I would do with these specific pieces if they were mine. From these two pieces one could create a nice tote bag, a table runner or a couple of nice napping quilts without too much work. For those of you that have other unfinished pieces for which you have lost enthusiasm, here are a few guidelines for giving them new life.

For things that don’t lie flat
Steam iron them as much as possible, attach them through quilting or appliqué to a foundation piece of some sort and then quilt the heck out of them. I recommend to Paisley Womble that she make hers into a tote. If she decides to do this, she might want to have a somewhat rigid, yet flexible, foundation to the tote such as Fast2Fuse to prevent the curling points from curling. Quilting densely will also help the piece lie flat.

Oddly Shaped Pieces
Both Pailey Womble and Slhelina could cut their blocks up and distribute them in different ways in a quilt (see illustrations). If you gasp at the notion of cutting up a Mariner’s Compass, think about it this way: A cut-up Mariner’s Compass that creates beautiful corners in a quilt is far more useful than one that is in tact yet stays in a plastic storage container forever. What’s most important is that there isn’t one lone piece floating around. Anchoring corners or creating a band across the entire quilt will make the piecing seem intentional.

Unfortunate Color Choices
If you have pieces that have odd colors in them, see if adding some new colors will diffuse the differences. Sometimes adding more colors improves the relationship between two that don’t seem to work well together—kind of like that good-tempered uncle who always seems to be able to diffuse the squabbles at holiday dinners!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 8:13 pm and is filed under sewing+quilting+fabric, whiptips. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.