Radiant New York Beauties: 14 Paper-Pieced Quilt Projects

By Valori Wells

“Wells has taken elements of the 1840s ‘Crown of Thorns,’ the 1860s ‘Rocky Mountain,’ and the 1930s ‘New York Beauty’ designs and given them a new spin.” —Bets Ramsey, coauthor of Southern Quilts

Here’s your opportunity to become an expert on glorious New York Beauty blocks! Valori Wells’ innovative designs will pump up your creativity, while her hands-on teaching style will walk you through each step of the process.

• 14 New York Beauty projects range from precise traditional blocks to freewheeling contemporary designs—all paper-pieced for accuracy
• Valori takes you beyond the basics to learn more complex techniques such as asymmetrical designs, rectangular blocks, and extended points
• Lessons in block construction, fabric choices, quilting designs, and more
• Patterns are included, plus learn to draft your own!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781607053729

Book preview

Introduction

New York Beauty quilts have always fascinated me. The circular shapes and precise points draw me in and start me thinking of other design possibilities. I can remember two such quilts in my mother’s book, Memorabilia Quilting, that set my creative mind working. Playing with color and pattern in a quilt design is a challenge that I love.

Four years ago, I returned to Sisters, Oregon, to join the family business, The Stitchin’ Post. I enrolled in a New York Beauty class that my mother, Jean Wells, was teaching. She taught us how to paper-piece the arcs to get perfect points and how to sew curved seams. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Once I had mastered the stitching techniques, I was off and running with design ideas of my own. With the deadline for our annual store challenge fast approaching, I jumped in with both feet and designed the original block for Radiant Beauty. What a liberating experience! Playing with color and pattern then became the focus. I love how the quilt turned out.

More ideas for New York Beauty blocks soon began to fill my design journal. One thing led to another, and I kept making quilts with different blocks. I have enough blocks drafted to be making New York Beauties for years.

The intricate-looking arcs in New York Beauty blocks are made with paper-piecing patterns. Stitching directly on the paper pattern ensures perfect points every time. The paper is torn away after the piecing is completed. It is difficult to make a mistake and the results are astonishing. The plain areas in the blocks are cut using freezer paper patterns. Read more about how to make and use the block patterns and my free-motion quilting designs on page 95.

In this book, I have combined a wide variety of block designs with a large selection of fabric styles. There are fourteen quilt projects in all— something to suit everyone’s taste, from the very traditional Red Licorice to the contemporary Sorbet Sunrise, with lots of other quilts in between. Each project includes details about the quilt construction, fabric choices, and approach to quilting. These quilter’s journals will help you in making decisions about your own quilts. A final section explains how I created Joshua Tree. This pictorial quilt uses New York Beauty blocks in quite a different way. I hope it will inspire you.

I couldn’t write a book without including some inspirational photographs. I am a trained black-and-white photographer and have taught myself color photography. I find design ideas everywhere I point my camera lens. The radial images I have captured on film to use for my own study appear throughout the book. I hope they will help you create the most exciting New York Beauty blocks ever.

I love photographing flowers, especially the centers. They display such incredible variety of colors and textures.

Let this small, attainable quilt introduce you to the art of New York Beauties. Basic blocks help you master the technical aspects of piecing an arc with points, while two different block sizes in warm and cool colors keep the piecing interesting. The final block layout moves your eye around the quilt, from the top left, across and down, and then back up again. The warm-to-cool color flow follows the same path, enhancing the circular movement of the design. This is a great beginner quilt, both for its technical piecing and the opportunity to play with color movement and transitions. Block sizes: 4 x 4 and 8 x 8. Quilt size: 38 x 42.

Fabric Selection

I had already sketched out the block design for this quilt when I began thinking about the palette. As I looked at the blocks circling around, I realized I could carry out the same idea with color. I had a collection of warm and cool plaids and stripes that had been waiting for the right quilt. Visualizing warm yellows and cool blues was easy for me. My problem was how to intermix the two.

Using the plaids as a theme, I started pulling solid color fabrics to match: yellow, rust, pink, purple, blue, turquoise, lime green. As the palette emerged, it became clear that purples—ranging from red burgundy to deep blue violet—would bridge the gap between warm and cool.

Starting with warm yellows and oranges in the top left block, I moved the warm colors across and down the quilt top, gradually increasing the red burgundy. I let a bit of blue and turquoise infiltrate the warm areas before turning totally cool along the lower edge and up the left side. Splashes of burgundy and orange in the cool area make the transition less abrupt. Lime green practically popped off the surface; I discovered I needed it to brighten up the cooler areas, which would otherwise appear too subdued. In the lower right corner, bright turquoise points swing a 180-degree arc, poising the viewer for the return journey across the quilt and back up the left side.

You can take this idea of circulating colors and try it with other palettes, such as yellow to red, green to blue, or pink to purple. The block layout lends itself to numerous possibilities. When you move the color around the quilt, your eye follows, echoing the arcs in the New York Beauties.

Quilting

When I sat down to quilt Carnival Beauty, I had playful images in mind: balloons, confetti, merrygo-rounds. I quilted one block at a time, making free-form circles and wavy lines and filling in the spaces with simple geometric shapes. Sometimes the quilting was the same on both sides of the block, and other times it varied. Given the playful theme, this was fine with me.

I like the happy accidents that occur in machine quilting. In this quilt, I realized that I was leaving the small New York Beauty block points unstitched. I liked the way these small, unstitched points stood out and became more three-dimensional, so I made them all that way.

Carnival Beauty Quilting Designs

I found a variegated thread in the quilt colorways to use for quilting. I liked the way the changing thread and plaid colors intermingled. From the theme to the colors, this piece was fun to quilt. I think it is important to enjoy the process as well as the finished product.

Enlarge as desired

A brilliant palette courtesy of a Gloriosa daisy.

An arc pattern. Sections 1, 3, 5, 7, etc., are the