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 Quilt Types : Piecing - New Innovations

Traditional piecing involved mostly straight lines. The Drunkard's path pattern challenged many a quilter because of its curves. Nowadays curves are in, as well as many other innovative ways of piecing together fabric, such as tessellating, strip piecing, photo transfer, and digital printing. With the many new tools available today, the only thing limiting quilters is their imagination.

Color has always been a key to a successful quilt, with the use of light, medium and dark fabrics. Now with the ability to dye, paint, and digitally create your own fabric, design has incorporated many new elements. Color is still key, but the quilter now has more ways of creating the color they want, as well as looking at how to piece the fabric together to view how the colors work as a design element.

One of the most interesting phases of innovative piecing has been the use of new fabrics and bolder colors with the more traditional quilt patterns. A log Cabin design done in batik or marbled fabric, a Wedding Ring done in hand-dyes, or a Drunkard's Path done in neon commercial fabrics opens a world of new piecing possibilities. Quilt stores now specialize in different types of fabrics, from reproduction to country to contemporary, giving the quilter amazing choices.

Piecing has evolved with new technology. With the advent of the rotary cutter in the late 1980s, strip piecing made creating lots of quick, evenly-sized blocks much easier. Strips of fabric are sewn together, in a series of color choices, pressed, cut into a variety of shapes and sizes, and then resewn together to create both traditional and nontraditional patterns, all faster than with hand-piecing. Now many blocks can be sewn at the same time, sewing the same pieces together, cutting, and then adding new pieces, with the result being a completed set of blocks in much less time, and all much more accurate for final setting into a quilt top.

One of the biggest changes in piecing has been the use of curves. With new tools on the market, as well as new techniques, curves are in. Piecing curves gives wonderful new lines and textures to traditional, as well as innovative, quilts. No longer dependent on piecing squares, rectangles and triangles to create the appearance of a curve, quilters now embrace rounded edges.

Triangle paper (available in many sizes) has made easier the task of creating lots of small triangles all the same size. Two fabrics are sewn, right side together, with a piece of triangle paper on top. Following preset sewing and cutting lines, in a manner of minutes you can have a perfect set of triangles sewn together and ready to become part of a larger design.

The computer has programs for creating your own designs, even to the point of providing fabric swatches to audition in a pattern. Quilters can print out patterns and fabric requirements, use their rotary cutters, and complete pieced quilts in much less time.

A number of quilters are experimenting with creating their own fabrics digitally. Design and print pieces of fabric particular to your artistic needs. A variety of products on the market prepare fabric for the inks from printers, so quilters can scan their own pictures or designs, print them out, add them to a quilt, and embellish as they wish.

Computer programs take much of the math out of creating new designs. Programs can alter the sizes of blocks, rearrange pieces, accent particular lines, and create tessellating designs. Quilters who have been hesitant about designing their own can now take advantage of the technology.

Hand or machine piecing, the technology today enables you to add many additional elements to a quilt, bringing traditional to a new innovative level.

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