In Saturday’s post, I showed you how I sewed a background square diagonally onto the end of a fabric strip for my Celtic Knots quilt. I promised to tell you what happened to the fabric in that corner!
I don’t like cutting off and throwing away a generous piece of fabric. So, after sewing the first diagonal line, I stitched a second line about 1/2-inch away from the first line…
Before cutting anything apart, I used the ironing method I learned years ago. First, I pressed the larger triangle into place and checked that it was straight…
Then I folded it back and pressed the smaller triangle, too…
Now that I KNOW both seams are properly pressed, I cut between the two lines of stitching…
I pressed them back in place and ended up with the strip I needed for the block and an extra half-square triangle (HST)!…
At some point, I’ll pull out my Bloc-Loc ruler and square up all these bonus HSTs. What will I use them for? Who knows! But they’re ready for a future project instead of going into the trash.
After lunch on Saturday, I switched from my Hunter’s Star quilt to Celtic Knots.
I started by cutting 2½-inch and 4½-inch squares from the background fabric.
As I started to select the scraps to use, I realized it would be easier to use the fabrics in groups of four for each block. I chose four strips that looked good together…
…stacked them, and cut a 6½-inch rectangle and two 2½-inch squares from each strip.
I dealt with the leftovers as I went, cutting whatever I could into 2½-inch or 2-inch squares. The smaller pieces went into my crumb drawers.
The first sewing step was to join a 2½-inch fabric square to a background square.
Next, I sewed a background square diagonally onto the end of each 6½-inch rectangle. Instead of marking every sewing line, I used the guide I had marked on my sewing machine…
I started at the top corner…
… checked that the bottom corner stayed on my marked line, and sewed across.
This step also gave me some bonus squares, but I’ll tell you more about those on Tuesday!
Next, I sewed the two small square units to a larger background square…
Then it was time to lay out the pieces…
At last, I could see the Celtic Knot design taking shape!
The final step was to add another “snowball” corner to each of the outer corners of the block.
One block finished!
I’ll leave it there for now. Come back on Thursday for more about the process—and on Tuesday, I’ll show you what happened to those bonus squares.
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It was Saturday morning, before 8:00, and I was already in my studio with an entire day free.
As my mug says, “Life IS GOOD.”
I planned to spend the morning working on my Hunter’s Star quilt. I started by using Bonnie Hunter’s Essential Triangle Tool to cut strips into the triangles that would become half-square triangles (HSTs).
Once I started sewing, I realized I had to pay close attention. If I wasn’t careful, one corner wouldn’t match quite right…
For the few that needed help, I pulled out my Bloc-Loc ruler…
and trimmed off the necessary slivers…
After making several sets of four matching HSTs, I began sewing two from each set together to form diamonds. I started laying them out and realized I needed another look at the pattern…
I printed the design from EQ and colored in the diamonds so I could see how everything fit together…
That helped me spot something I had missed: the diamonds needed to be sewn in different orientations. I started making them in groups of ten so I could keep track of which was which…
I also remembered that I still needed larger squares for the corners.
Eventually, I could lay out the block, minus those corner squares..
And then came my biggest realization of the morning: I wasn’t piecing a whole star at once. The corner portions of the blocks were going to form the star…. DUH!! No wonder I couldn’t visualize how it was going to work.
When I stopped for lunch, I had about 40 diamond sets put together (out of 160), and HSTs from each color combination set aside for the filler portions of the blocks…
I think this quilt will be fun to piece, but I’ll definitely need to keep my wits about me.
It’s the kind of project that rewards slowing down, checking the layout, and enjoying the moment when the pattern finally makes sense.
Have you made patterns like this???
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