Right after I made the linear piano key border for my Puss in the Corner quilt I saw a post on Instagram from a woman who, like me, had also been sewing along regularly in Cheryl Arkison’s 2022 Quilters Adventure Playcation Sew Along (#qpadventuresewalong). Her new post showed linear pieced blocks from a new year-long project she had just joined. Totally intrigued, I clicked over to see what she was doing.

Brenda Gael Smith, an Australian quilter, is hosting her #dreamlines2023 project. It consists of 10 months, January 2023-October 2023) of different strip-pieced blocks. The patterns and instructions are offered each month to folks who sign up for her newletter on her Serendipity Patchwork and Quilting website. In November Brenda will discuss ways to join the strips and December will be the month to show what we’ve made.

Brenda says this can be an improv project or a precision pieced project. Above are my January (green) and February (navy) strips. I’m using her width-of-fabric option, so for me it’s just easier to cut the fabric using a ruler. She also gives instructions for smaller strips which are fat quarter friendly.

Last year in my Quilters Adventure Playcation Sew Along quilt I used mostly scraps with pastel backgrounds, but I really liked what folks were doing with curated fabric collections. So for this project I picked a set of fabrics to use in my Dreamlines2023 pieced strips. I actually pulled solids that I often have left behind in the bin because they were too bright or too dark. Well, not the red, but most of the others. Guessing that most of these strips will use pops of colors, this seems like a perfect time to use these fabrics.

January strips and the fabrics I pulled for this project

All my fabrics are solids. But I just saw someone post some great blocks which made use of a striped fabric in the center strip. Printed stripes added to pieced stripes make really awesome strips! When I complimented her on that great idea, she thanked me but told me she actually borrowed the idea from someone else. Hmm. I might just do the same. I’m still thinking about if I want to stray from my solids-only collection.

If you want to see what folks are doing, check out these tags on Instagram. #dreamlines2023 #dreamlinesproject and the month followed by dreamlines #februarydreamlines

Or sign up on and join the fun! Brenda’s newsletter sign-up is at the very bottom of her website home page. Scroll all the way down to find it!