Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We had a little quilting get together this weekend.  Astrid brought her most recent completed quilt for Show N Tell.  It is an Irish Chain quilt in green and white for St. Patrick's Day.  It seems after she made her Japanese quilt, she decided try something Irish.  From what I gather, she is planning a Scottish quilt next.  I think she may be on to an international quilt stretch.  We shall see.  

Astrid (left) and Marsha (right) hold up Astrid's Irish Chain quilt.

Astrid quilted it with diagonal quilting across all blocks.  You just can't see the white thread on the white blocks.  I believe she machine sewed the binding on.

Friends and Quilting Just Go Together

It is the President's Day weekend and our friend, Edna, has come for a visit.  We all got together for the four F's, friends, food, fun, and flexibility, at Marhsa's house.  Edna brought a couple quilts with her, for Show N Tell.  Marsha and I (Kirsten) hung them on the wall for photos.

This is Edna and her 'African Coins' quilt

Edna's other quilt, she explained, has one splash of green and some baby chick fabric, so she calls it the "Chicken and Greens" quilt.  She said she used a variegated brown thread to quilt it, so in some places the quilting looks dark and in others, light.  

Edna explained how she made this quilt.

The wall paper at Marsha's makes it difficult to see the light binding all the way around the quilt.  She hand-stitched the binding down on the back of the quilt.  It looks so perfect.

We had alot of fun!  Friends and quilting just go together.

Jane's January Tutorial

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!

Ringing in the New Year and Show and Tell

Our little quilt group of friends are having a little party.  Jane and I brought some Show N Tell.  I, being Astrid, brought my Japanese Style Civil War Nine Patch Quilt and Jane brought her "That 70's Quilt" Civil War Nine Patch.  We did a little scrappy sewing tonight, and we are going to do a group scrap quilt in 2020.  Kirsten is still working on hand-quilting her Civil War Nine Patch quilt.  Hopefully, she will get it finished in 2020.  Happy New Year!

Astrid's quilt with Japanese fabrics and long-arm machine quilted

by Sid Mooney

Jane's 70;s fabrics quilt; stitched in the ditch by Jane.

 Look at the next photo for a look at the back.

This is the fabulous back of Jane's 70's style quilt.

Jane's Quilts -With Those American Jane Fabrics

In the last post, Marsha said that Jane was catching up and doing a Civil War Nine Patch quilt.  Well, I had not seen Jane's quilt that she had started last January.  Remember Jane's January Tutorials?  Where are those?  Oh, one was on our float last summer and at the quilt show in October, but nobody posted the photos.  I have connected with Jane and got a couple photos, so you can see how they turned out.  She still has to put the binding on the first one she did; the Sixteen Patch On-Point quilt.

Jane's Rail Fence Quilt

Jane's Vertical Row Quilt; this quilt top was finished in Jan 2019 and

in the Kuna Days Parade and the BBQ Quilt Show.

Red Thread?

Did you see that Kirsten is quilting her quilt with red thread?  It should look very interesting when completed . . .whenever that happens.  She is hand-quilting it. Yikes! 

This is a close-up of Kirsten's hand-stitched red quilting.

 I am using country sort of fabrics in my Civil War Nine Patch; you know, guitars, chickens, bandana fabric.  I thought I had my quilt top finished, then I decided to add some interesting old timey style borders on.  I used dark blue bandana fabrics on the back.  I, too, have decided to quilt mine with red thread, as I and a friend were discussing the matter and she said it was a good idea.  We shall see how the two compare.  I admit, mine may not be as bold as Kirsten's, but that is because I have stitched-in-the-ditch.  I just finished it last night. I used a blanket stitch, that my sewing machine has, to sew down the binding on the front of the quilt.  I love it!

The dark blue paisley binding is sewed down on top with red blanket stitches.

I made the backing a little bigger than the front and pulled the back forward and folded it to make the binding.  I call it a "cheaty binding", but some folks call it something else.

Here is me, holding up my finished Civil War Nine Patch quilt.

 Then, here is some news.  Jane is catching up and is also doing a Civil War Nine Patch quilt.  She won't give us a hint on her theme, though.  Astrid said she has some bright orange fabric, that a friend gave to her.  She serged it, washed it, and got it all pressed, and apparently that is one of the fabrics going into her quilt.  Astrid said it may be from the 1970s!  Well, that will be different.

It seems I am the first to complete my Civil War Nine Patch quilt.

Hand Quilting A Must When Roughing It

I went camping with friends, last Thursday through Sunday.  We stayed at the Lafferty Campground, which is 22 miles northwest of Council, Idaho.  We had a relaxing time.  We went exploring and for walks, and I went wading in the creek.  There was a rabbit in #2 and a rabbit in #3; we were in #8.  There was no one else at the campground, except for chipmunks and Mr. Snake. I had time for napping, reading while napping, and napping while reading. 

I also did some hand quilting.  Marsha, Astrid, and I are doing The Civil War Nine Patch Challenge.  I have my quilt top all pieced and I am hand-quilting it.  I brought it on the camping trip to work on, since we are roughing it and have no electricity.  

I tossed my camping quilt on a nice warm rock, after I asked that nice little garter snake if I could sit on one of his rocks, where I sat and got a good amount of hand-quilting done.  I still have a long way to go, however.

Saturday afternoon we had a thunder and lightening storm with lots of rain, so we stayed in the camper, where I did a little more quilting.  It is starting to look rather rustic, like a Civil War quilt should.