Cover story
Ada Whitcomb pieced her first nine-patch at eleven. Sixty years on, she still cuts every strip by hand — and can tell you why the rotary cutter changed the shape of American quilting more than any loom ever did.
Read the pieceDesign wall
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Click any pieced block to give it a quarter turn. A quilt top is only ever one rotation away from a different quilt — that is the whole craft, in one gesture.
Last turned: nothing yet
Field notes
The strips between blocks do the structural work: they absorb the tiny disagreements between pieced units and let a top hang square. Read a quilt as a grid with breathing room built in and the whole object makes sense.
“You don't finish a quilt. You stop, and then you give it away.”
In this issue
Workshop sheet
| Fabric | Cut | Pieces | Yardage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indigo solid | 2½″ strips | 96 | 1¾ yd |
| Madder print | 4½″ squares | 48 | 1¼ yd |
| Ochre shot cotton | 3″ triangles | 64 | ¾ yd |
| Muslin ground | Sashing 1½″ | — | 2 yd |
| Bias binding | 2¼″ on grain 45° | — | ⅝ yd |
Join the bee
We mail from Marchfield on the first Thursday of the quarter. No digital edition — the point is the cloth swatch stapled to page nine.