Welcome to January and my January tutorial! Time to use up some of those scraps you have been collecting, especially those little triangles!
I made a bin just to put all my scraps in, and I have a lot of triangles. In this tutorial, I will show you how to make a sharp quilt using some of those triangles. To use up "some" of those small triangles, you need to cut some big triangles.
Cut a wide strip of fabric as your background fabric. See how it is folded in half? Leave it folded in half, when you cut it width of fabric. Then leave it folded when you cut your big triangles, so you are cutting two triangles at a time. It saves a lot of time and they will be in sets of two. Easier to keep track of.
Use your big square ruler, with the diagonal lines, to cut all the big triangles.
I cut four strips of the blue fabric and cut it entirely into big triangles. This will make a couple extra blocks, so I choose the ones I like and leave a couple, I don't like as much, out. This is called design options.
After you get your big triangles cut out, lay the small ones on top, face-down as pictured. Make sure you place them close enough to the tip of the blue one that when pressed over, after being sewn on, it will cover the tip. Also, be careful not to stretch your triangles when pinning or sewing them. Two sides of the triangles are cut on the bias, so they will stretch if you are not careful.
I have chain pieced these, so they are sewed to the blue triangles. See what happens when you fold the small triangle over to cover the blue tip? If you chain pieced (one after another on your sewing machine), you need to cut the threads between the triangles and press them all flat. Then, trim the blue part, under the little triangle, to match your quarter inch seam of the small triangle.
The little triangle should stick out a bit. Lay the whole thing flat and place your ruler along the edge of the blue and trim the small triangle fabric flush.
They will look like this. Place them on your design wall and arrange them in a way that is pleasing to you.
After I did four of the triangles, I chain pieced a whole bunch!
Lay four pieces next to your sewing machine. Chose two and lay them right sides together with little triangles face to face. I call the little triangle end, the center of the block, because it will end up in the center. Sew 1/4 in seam. Do the same with the other two triangles. Press them, keeping in mind, the seam on one triangle needs to be pressed the opposite direction from the other triangle. Look in center of this diagram photo. Then put these two pieces right sides together, matching the seams in the center, so they snug into each other. This makes for tight sharp points at the intersection.
We are going to pay attention to seams. If we pay attention to seams, we can create less bulk at the intersections and make the quilt top smooth, tidy, and less bumpy. This diagram shows how you can press one of the seams in a different direction, so when they are sewed together it is less thick where they meet. The small triangle portion on the right is a little larger than the one on the left, so I pressed it away from the center point. Look at the next diagram:
This diagram shows where I pressed the seams to alternate on both sides, so when I sew both sides together, it will be easier to sew across where they join, making it smoother on top.
Now, I have sewed both halves together, and I pressed the center seam flat, instead of to one side. What this does is further reduce bulk in the very center of the block, where there are six seams coming together in one central location.
This is the finished block. The corners of the inner pieces are not meant to match up. This is what gives it that cool wild look that I like so much.
Here are all the blocks I like best, in the arrangement I like. They have not been squared up.
Square up your blocks. You can use a square ruler or a regular acrylic quilting ruler. I trimmed about a quarter of an inch all the way around my blocks. Then I decided I would not center each and every small block, in the middle. I picked two to be a little off center. This will give my quilt a little personality.
This shot is of all the blocks on my design wall, but not sewed to each other yet.
This diagram shows how I also pressed the joining seams out. Typically when I press my seams, I press them to one side, but when I have where six seams are going to be joining at the same intersection, I press them flat out. It will be easier to join my four rows together and make the top less bumpy.
Here is my complete quilt top. I have made it smooth and crisp looking by joining my seams carefully and thinking about which way to press the seams after each step. I have to decide if I want to put a border or two on this quilt top. Check back in a month or two to see what I decided. To make it easier on you, there is another way that small triangles can be used in a quilt top like this.
Instead of sewing a small triangle on each big blue triangle, you can sew them on only two, of the four triangles, that make your square block. They look like bow ties or butterflies. However, you will use half as many of all those triangles in such a project.
Now I still have a ton of these small triangles to deal with, so back into the bin! I hope you learned something from this tutorial and I would love to hear what you think of how the quilt top turned out. See you soon!
