A Freestyle Block Swap

Foot²Freestyle is a new scrap-busting block swap party for 12 people. It has been developed by Kate Chiconi of Tall Tales From Chiconia and Sue Brown (me!) of From the Magpie's Nest. We hope you'll want to join the party – everyone who does will end up with 36 foot-square blocks, the makings of a decent sized quilt.

Here's how it's going to work. First come, first served, but we will retain the next few names as well in case anyone has to drop out and a replacement would like to step in. To make it work, we need enough people to make enough blocks for a decent-size quilt, and 12 is the practical minimum. If we get a lot of response, we can run two parallel block swap parties, which would be very exciting. If the participants enjoy it enough, we may do the whole thing again but have more people and make the blocks smaller – Four²Freestyle, for example – or simply make fewer blocks each.

Each month, one of the 12 names is picked out of a hat at random. That person is notified by both by email and on the F²F page we will set up on our blogs, and chooses a color theme for their blocks. This color choice will be advised to all participants on the F²F page. Each of the F²F swappers makes three, foot-square (12 inches square) blocks each month, and we all send our 3 blocks to the same selected person, who gets to choose color, but that's all. You get to choose the design, layout, fabric, etc. That’s why it’s called Freestyle…

Your foot-square block must feature the selected color, but can be any design, any style, any layout, so long as it’s a foot (12 inches) square plus a quarter inch seam allowance all round. Please make sure you measure and trim your blocks before you send them out.

At the end of the year, we all end up with 36 blocks, which is enough make a 72” square quilt top. At that point, we celebrate and have an online exhibition! We are each responsible for assembling, quilting and binding our own quilts. You can, if you prefer, make something else out of your blocks – for example, if you’d like to make baby quilts, a twin size, or multiple pillows, etc. Your blocks, your choice. Freestyle, remember?

Foot²Freestyle will be administered by Kate Chiconi of Tall Tales from Chiconia and Sue Brown of From the Magpie's Nest. Once we know how many (or if any!) people are interested and if it will go ahead, we will make the image above available as a button for you to grab for your blogs. Insufficient interest will result in failure to launch... Contact us in the Comments section of this post if you’d like to participate. Please also send emails to us at the addresses shown on our blogs, so we have your email for future notifications (it doesn't matter which of us you send to). Entry is strictly on a first come, first served basis. The selected participant each month is chosen by random draw from the remaining names and cannot be changed, to keep things simple and administration to a minimum.

The swap party begins in June, which should give you time to work out if you have time to join us.  We'll send an update closer to the time. Hope to see you there!

Kate & Sue