I’ve made quilts in series before, including this series of 12″ square quilts inspired by Gwen Marston’s work and the refrigerator quilts by Bev Mannes.
This experiment led to a larger quilt in the style of Gwen Marston:
Cherrywood Toss, 2016.
And this small quilt, made for the Quilt Alliance annual contest:
“Gwen Visits the Farm” is the quilt I made for the Quilt Alliance contest
Although I didn’t think of it as a series at first, I’ve made a many-years-long series of scrap quilts, including these:
More recently, I was inspired by an article by Jill Jensen in Quilting Arts Magazine. You can find a similar article here on the Quilting Company blog. I also bought a new (to me) book:
Visual Guide to Working in a Series, by Elizabeth Barton
It’s an art quilt book, but I consider all my quilts art, including the bed quilts.
I decided to make a series of blocks rather than a series of quilts this time, trying out various improvisational techniques.
I plan to use this collection of fat eights from Cotton & Steel:
After auditioning several options, I selected royal blue for a solid to go with them. It’s in the upper right corner of the picture.
Here are the first 4 blocks. My theme was triangles, and I started by making a strip set:
I trimmed each block to 6-1/2″ wide; the length is random
I’m going to make a set of blocks every month until I either get tired of it or run out of fabric. To be continued 😉
Zippy Quilts 
A series of blocks…I like this idea. I’ve been stuck in a “I don’t know what I want to do next” rut. I also like “to be continued”.
When I don’t know what to do next I either review my UFOs or check my Pinterest boards. So many quilts, so little time!
I’m on Pinterest now😊Thanks
Love the variety- so creative
Thanks!
I like your thinking in all of this…block series with consistent color/fabric palette, then exploring different themes within the block series. The triangles are especially intriging to me as I’ve had a basic triangle quilting ruler for decades and haven’t gotten around to focusing on it…mostly because I thought in terms of a complete something-or-other project it would need to be used for…Instead: a block series might be a better fit for my own explorations in that regard.
Hmmm – will ponder this for sure.
Meanwhile, I am anxiously awaiting the next ‘to be continued’ installment on this!
🙂
Thank you!
I especially like the scrappy zigzag triangles (lower left, center collage photo). I am puzzling out how it’s put together. . . . Gwen gave the program at an area quilt guild a while back. One of the takeaways: “If you make a quilt with 20 identical blocks, why not just make one block and look at it 20 times?” 🙂
I love that quote! Thanks! As to the block, I made a strip set, then cut it up 😄
It will be fun to follow your progress on this project! I read Barton’s book a while back. I wasn’t ready for a series then. Maybe I should reread it. 🙂
I’ll bet you have been making at least one series without thinking of it as such. Good to hear from you 🙂
I’m starting to learn that there is a lot more to Improv quilting than stitching some scraps together and putting them together in rows . Your mini quilts are great and clearly you put lots of thought into each one. I like the idea of exploring my comfort zone with scraps. Thanks for the inspiration.
Thanks for reading and commenting. I look forward to seeing your creations.
You have certainly earned your stripes — what a lot of lovely quilts. Your latest series is stunning. Looking forward to seeing what you do next.
Thanks!
This is a wonderful series! I have that book also and you might have been the person who recommended it to me when we discussed it related to one of your posts last year (or I have blog confusion at this point – ha!). The Cotton + Steel fat eighths are exceptionally yummy. Okay I must make myself sewing today after reading this post 🙂
Ha! Those fat eights were “accidentally” bought one morning when I was on the treadmill with my iPad 😁
Be careful I hear that iPad browsing is dangerous…for our wallets 😉