Five Shadows

30″ blocks make up a quick quilt top!

I demonstrated some tips for making large blocks Saturday, July 14th, at Fabrics and Friends Quilt Shoppe, Roanoke, Indiana.

Tip #1: To mark the diagonal line on the half-square triangles (HST) use your iron. Fabrics right sides together, carefully fold one corner of your square to the opposite corner, press  the diagonal fold. You will sew a scant 1/4″ seam on both sides of the marked diagonal line.

Tip #2:  Once you have sewn a scant 1/4″ seam on both sides of your marked diagonal line, notch out the corners before cutting on the diagonal line.

Cut on the diagonal marked line. Press seam towards darker fabric.

Cutting out the notch will eliminate the ‘dog ears’ that most quilters trim off later. (Thanks to my friend Bev Gunn for showing this trick to me years ago!) Note: no ‘dog ear’ on above sample, while there still is a ‘dog ear’ on the sample below.

Tip #3: Use the 7/8″ rule to determine the size you will need to cut your HST pieces.  The formula is add 7/8″ to the finished size of the piece. I wanted a 30″ finished block. Each of the 9 pieces for the block would need to measure 10″ when finished.  10″ (finished size) + 7/8″ = 10 7/8″. Two 10 7/8″ pieces matched with two 10 7/8″ background pieces will yield the four HST pieces I needed for the blocks shown.

(And don’t forget to add 1/2″ to the finished size of the other pieces you will need to cut for your blocks.)

 

Picture Purrfect Kitties with purrsonality! This was a fun applique quilt. I used raw edge applique technique for this quilt top.

“ANT”titude  50″ x 56″ Picnic Quilt

Fun quilt full of ants stealing the picnic food. Fusible applique. My favorite are the ants at the bottom left by the glass of pink lemonade.

This past week, I worked on two applique quilts, using two different methods.

Ribbon Cone Flowers, by Castilleja Cotton

For this quilt I pieced the background, then sandwiched and quilted it. Once the quilting was done, I then fused the flowers in place, buttonhole stitched the stems and leaves, and free motioned quilted the flowers and veins on the leaves.

Tea Party, by Lauren + Jessi Jung

Even though this pattern is designed for needle turn applique, I used fusible web and stitched around each piece using invisible thread. It went together much quicker than I expected. It is a cute Springtime quilt – just like the pattern says.

Both are shop models for Fabrics and Friends Quilt Shoppe, Roanoke, IN.

Last week I made 5 quilts all in the Jelly Roll Race style as shop models for Fabrics and Friends Quilt Shoppe, Roanoke, IN. These would be fun quilts to make at a retreat and also would make quick quilts for charity.

The youtube instructions say to open the Jelly Roll and sew the strips end to end (mitered) just as they come from the Jelly Roll. That is what I did for the first quilt, but I didn’t like how the strips of similar color did not show up the mitered seam. Having that mitered seam pop, I think, is the whole point of this method.

For the next quilt I used a baby jelly roll – just 20 strips of fabric. I mixed up the strips instead of working straight through the jelly roll, and liked the results much better. The top ended up being a perfect crib size quilt.

Next, I moved on to 5″ strips – Deborah Roehm, the quilt shop owner, wondered if a 5″ strip would work for this method. We didn’t see any reason for it not to work – so I made two of them. A flannel, and a batik. (Batik pictured below)

I love the look of the 5″ strips! So dramatic, and the mitered seams show up well. I think we used 20 strips. Deborah did the cutting and I did the sewing. We also made two crib size using flannel.(no pictures) Deb cut kits for her Saint Patrick’s Day Sale and they all sold!

Here is a quilt using 30′s fabrics with two inner border options. The original pattern used Moda fabrics with a 30′s look of dog prints, dog bone prints and florals. Using those fabrics with the first border option of pieced bone blocks would be a nice fit. But since I didn’t have any of the doggy fabrics, I opted to showcase both border options – two sides of the quilt display the pieced bones option, while the other two sides display the alternative option. The pattern is Moda Pampered Pooch. This well be an upcoming class at Fabrics and Friends Quilt Shoppe, Roanoke, IN.

Moda fabrics. Hullabaloo and other Modas.

Oops! First ‘frog stitching’ of the new year!  ”Rip it!”  I got a call from the long-arm quilter who quilts up the shop models for Fabrics and Friends Quilt Shoppe, Roanoke, IN. She was quilting along and came to a block with a flipped section, making a flying goose instead of an on point square. I picked up the quilt from her and ripped out the section in question. Because she had already quilted up to the seam of the mistake, I had no choice but to hand piece it back in to it’s correct placement.

Here is the quilt in question. Can you find my mistake?

Hint: it’s in the second row.

Here it is:

See the flying goose in the bottom center? It should be flipped to make an on point square.

Here it is corrected:

Too bad the quilting is not showing up in the photo. The long-arm quilter does such a lovely job! I was sorry she had to take the quilt off the frame and now has to re-load the quilt due to my mistake. But we agree that it is a good thing she found it before ripping out quilting would have been involved!

Thangles. Do you know about them? Do you use them? Thangles is a paper piecing method to make half square triangles (HST). And I just learned that you can make quarter square triangles (QST) too! I just made their Mama & Her Kitten pattern. And I must say using the Thangles to make such tiny QST   for the kitten head and ears was pretty simple. The website has a nice little video showing how to construct HST.

Fabrics and Friends Quilt Shoppe is gearing up to start a new Block of the Month Program. This BOM uses Thangles Scrappy Stars Pattern. Kits will soon be available through the quilt shop.

Quilts are on their way to the Long-arm Quilter.

I make shop models for Fabrics and Friends Quilt Shoppe, 126 W. Second Street, Roanoke, IN 46783. Owner Deborah Roehm’s Victorian house is bursting at the seams with lovely fabrics, patterns, books, tools.  Josephine’s Knot by Calico Carriage Quilt Designs is the latest top I have pieced. 63″ x 100″.