Mod-Mood Quilt FAQ ~ 5 Tips to Piecing Gentler Curves

There are several people who have taken the Mod-Mood Quilt challenge and have hopefully, happily discovered that it really is a challenge. Through a series of FAQ updates I want to highlight a few of the blog posts out there by people who are working their way through the process and respond to some of the technical and perhaps creative-psychic challenges they are facing.

First up, Ginger at The Simplest Complications and her post titled Devil's spawn...

Good for you Ginger for taking on the challenge with a sense of humor. It looks like you started out so calmly with tranquil turquoise, but the next round of colors might be raging reds and frustrating fuchsias!

Notice that Ginger's curves are more extreme than mine. My quilt has the illusion of having extreme curves, but in reality many of the curved sections gently stack together.

Here are some supplementary tips to my curve piecing tutorial for controlling the extremity of your curves:

1. Begin to control the gentleness or sharpness of your curves when you are piecing the wedges. To flatten out a curve just throw in some upside down wedges here and there.
2. When arranging and layering your curve pieces, let them overlap and cut away excess for a gentler curve. Add filler fabric on the end of a curved section if necessary.
3. Don't be afraid to use darts to draw in slack material when necessary.
4. There are a couple of extreme curves in my quilt. In that case I hand appliqued them in place.
5. Try clipping sharp curves to allow the seams to lie flat. Convex curves ( can be simply snipped. The concave counterpart ) can be snipped in a V to remove excess fabric.

If you are working on your own Modern Mood Quilt, keep me posted on your progress and send me your questions! If you have some tips of your own on piecing curves please share!