Category: Pieced Quilts

Time to start piecing

As I posted on Tuesday, I have now picked my fabrics and am ready to start piecing the diamond mountains.

As I looked at my design…..

….I realized that I had another decision to make….

Do I graph it out and work from the design?

OR

Do I wing it and piece it on the go?

Now, normally, I don’t do improv piecing, but it is appealing to me right now, so I decided to cut the first diamond and make a start….

After adding each round of fabric, I used a ruler to carefully trim it down, ensuring that I maintained the 60-degree angle….

I started out using a small ruler, but moved to the Deb Tucker 60-degree ruler as the pieces got bigger….

I kept making diamonds of various sizes, starting out with a small center diamond and adding lots of strips..

Before long, I had these four diamonds pieced….

As I looked at it, I decided to piece two of them together and add another strip…..

….or two…..

….to break up the monotony!

I realize that I need to add some smaller, brighter diamonds along the way, but I am happy with the direction this one is heading!!

More to come….

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Do you struggle to decide what to quilt in your blocks? If so, check out my FREE series…..

Click HERE for more information

I HATE Binding

When asked about my favorite part of quilting, my answer is always “anything but the binding”, and alternately, if asked about my least favorite part of quilting the answer is “BINDING”!!

Over the years, I have tried to find ways to make the process easier and used all of my tricks to finish up the Orange & Green charity quilt that I have been working on for the last few months…..

I am excited that this quilt is finished, but I have loved all of the different techniques that I was able to try in it…..

Now to find something else to quilt!!

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Guild Meeting Deluxe!!

On Tuesday night my guild met for their April meeting.

We normally have a speaker each month, and this time we enjoyed an online talk from Dee Bushrod of PixelQuilts

I you have followed any of my posts about quilt shows, you have already seen some of her work!!

I posted this quilt of Maya Angelou from Quilt Con – 2023…..

“Maya Angelou” by Devida Bushrod

….and just recently posted this quilt from our local guild…..

“Swift” by Karry Weaver

Karry used Dee’s program and information to design her quilt.

To say that I was interested was a gross understatement!!

Dee’s presentation was so much fun. She started with a trunk-show of sorts, telling us stories about her inspirations and about the quilts themselves.

Then, she showed us how her design program works and it is fairly straightforward!!

You upload a photo, crop it to the needed size and the program does the rest, giving you a pdf pattern that selects colors (Moda solids), and provides “blocks” that make up the quilt…..

She did warn us that certain photos would not work well, especially ones with lots of shadow or not enough shadow…..but I had a photo…..

….that I wanted to try!

I removed the background, uploaded, and cropped it…..

….and pushed the magic button!!

Sadly, it didn’t work well…..

I think that there is too much going on in this photo but I am not deterred!!

I think that I would like to try this process at some point…..

Just need to find the perfect photo!!

Would you ever try this??

Finally, I HIGHLY recommend her as a speaker for your guild!!

AND….. If you are looking for a speaker, check out my offerings too…..

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.

You can find out more at this link…..

Using it all up!!

Okay….my top is finished….’

Now it is time to make the back….hopefully using up all of the leftovers from the top!!

I normally start out by finding one larger piece of fabric that can cover the middle of the back…..

I added another green fabric to the top and bottom…..

….and started looking for other fabrics to put down each of the sides.

THEN I saw these Half-Square-Triangle blocks that I had forgotten about…..

I really wanted to use them up, so decided to make a strip of those.

My first thought was to make more Flying Geese blocks but realized that I didn’t want to match any points…..

So, let’s piece them a different way…..

….ending up with this strip….

Now I need to add more fabric to the left side so that the pieced HST’s end up closer into the middle. Let’s start with a white strip….

….and add some leftover oranges…..

I wish that I had remembered the pieced squares earlier and I would have made them the accent, but at least they are mostly gone!!

There are a few left…..

….a few scraps moved into the basket…..

….and one UFO box EMPTY…..

The question is which box to clean out next!!

Now to finish the quilting and this Charity Quilt can be turned in at the next meeting!!

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Subscribe to my mailing list and receive this free pattern for “Dancing Squares”…..

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Do the Math

Have you ever thought….”I don’t need to figure out the exact size…. I can just wing it”?

Well, I tried “winging it”. Let me tell you the story.

As we talked about last weekend, I had decided to use the leftover “flying geese” blocks to work into the border of my charity quilt.

The problem was that the internal block was 4″x8″ and the border block was 3″x6″.

So, my first thought was that I would just measure the distances and make it work…..

THAT DID NOT WORK!

Mostly because I failed to take the 1/4″ seam allowance into the measurement.

So, I pulled out a piece of paper, drew out what was happening and “did the math”!!….

Once I learned that each end piece needs to be cut 5.5-inches and the internal strips need to be cut 10.5-inches.

LOOK how well they fit together…..

Now that I KNOW the measurements, the quilt top was a breeze to finish!!

I have been thinking about how to quilt it, and those two center squares are calling for a “Square Spiral”….come back tomorrow, and we will learn how to quilt it!!

I also had some fun with the backing….we will tackle that on Saturday.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

One of my favorite things about quilting is motivating others and helping them in their quilting journey. As part of this endeavor, I LOVE to present programs and workshops to groups and guilds around the world. All of my programs work well with Zoom meetings, and I would love to speak to your group.

You can find out more at this link…..