Quilt Along Week 4 - Carving out Your Niche

Another video!  My apologies for the bad lighting and my apparently rosy cheeks. (A total aside - I love when The Monster says 'apparently', it is a totally overused word in our house.) It's week 4 of the Quilt Along.  How are you doing?

Start with your strips sets, well pressed and 1.5-2 inches wider than the desired finished size of your blocks. You can see below what I mean. I am aiming for a 9.5 inch unfinished block.

Take your ruler and start rotating it. Aim for an angle like below - just a little bit off center. One important thing to keep in mind is that you want to avoid teeny strips on the side. Ensure that you have at least .5 inch strip from the last seam to the edge of the cut.  Conveniently, the ruler is your cutting guide so you can watch this. 

Cut the right side and the top.  If you are left-handed it might be more comfortable to cut the left and top first.
Flip around your fabric strip.  Generally I do this by rotating my entire cutting mat instead of lifting the fabric. Line up the bottom left corner (bottom right if you're left handed) with the 9.5 inch by 9.5 inch (or your desired size) marking on your ruler.  This will create cutting lines on the edge of the ruler for your side and top to finish of the block. Cut.

And there you have a finished block.  It can be used in any direction when it comes to laying out your blocks.

Now you need to cut out the rest of the blocks from the single strip set. How many you get will depend on your desired block size.  You should get 6 if you want 6.5 inch blocks, 4 at 9.5, and 3 at 12.5. The process is the same as above, but you start above your last cut as opposed to the top of the strip set.  You can fiddle with the rotation of the ruler here and there.  All your blocks can be cut in the same direction or you can rotate the ruler in the opposite direction.  I tend to do two in one direction, and two in the opposite.

The next two photos are examples of one strip set cut.  One for the original Gratitude quilt and one for the current one.

Notice the varying angles.  This will give you even more opportunities for dramatic movement in the final top.

Next week will layout our quilt top and get it together. Remember, try not to play with your blocks too much once you've cut them.  The seams are not finished and you don't want anything the loosen. See you next week!

Quilt Along 1 - Needles and Irons

Okay, now where we? Oh that's right, we were making a quilt together.

At this point you've hopefully picked your fabric and cut it in to strips. Finally, we can start sewing.  And really, how hard can it be to sew strips together?  It isn't hard, but there are some things we need to pay attention to as we sew.

Get Ready to Sew

Pick a neutral thread.  Usually, I piece with a grey thread if I am using colours or medium and dark toned fabric. 

Separate your strips with the background pieces in one pile and your accent pieces in another.

Take one strip each of all your background pieces and set aside. 

Turn on your iron and get it hot.

Start Sewing

The first step is to sew all your strips (minus the ones set aside) together in pairs, right sides together. Match up the tops of the strips. Don't worry about the bottoms because all your strips will vary slightly in length.

Grab randomly! Sew together different background strips and sew background strips to accent strips. Do not sew accent strips to accent strips. Do not put an accent strip on the bottom of your pairs as you sew.

I find it easy to just sit and chain piece all these strips, one after the other. That means you sew one set together and without lifting your needle or cutting your threads you start sewing the next set of strips. And so on and so on.

Pressing

I am a firm believer in pressing and pressing well. Really, you can't make this design work well without pressing. But keep in mind that pressing is not ironing the life out of your fabric and stretching it out.

One of my quilt mentors taught me that you should be able to press with one hand.  We have a tendency to pull on fabric when we use two hands.  The hand we are supposedly using to hold the fabric often pulls on it without us even thinking about it. Try taking your iron and pressing while holding your other hand behind your back. It will feel awkward, but it is a good exercise to see if you have a tendency to pull.

You will also see that this method really only works when you press to one side, not when pressing your seams open.  I'm not a fan of pressing seams open, so this works for me.

To press your strip sets I recommend pressing the seam flat, right out of the sewing machine. Then nose your iron in between the fabrics, on the right side of the bottom strip. Slowly nudge the iron forward and to the side, pressing the top fabric to the side and down. When you've reached the end of the strip give it another full press.  Set aside and repeat for the other strips.

When you were sewing you matched up the top of your strips, right? So all your pressing should be to the strip on the right.  For the first set of strips (the pairs) this will mean you will always press towards the accent.  If you have darker accents then this is what you want.  If you have a darker background then you will press to the background pieces.

As you progress through sewing sets together keep trying to press to the right, unless you have a dark accent/background combo.  Then always press to the dark.  This conscientious pressing will ensure that your accent pieces will really pop.

Continue Sewing

Now that you have your first pairs of strip sets, you need to sew the pairs together.  Again, grab randomly.  And again, match up the tops of the sets.  Depending on how you sewed your first sets together some typical examples of the order of fabrics when you sew pairs together might be:

background - background - background - accent

background - accent - background - background

background - accent - background - accent

Press.

Depending on the final size you want your block, at this point you may be adding a single strip or another strip set as you progress. The final size of your strip set should be at least an inch and a half  to two inches larger than the desired block size. Keeping sewing strip sets together until you get the desired width.

The one thing to keep in mind when it comes to sewing your strip sets together is that you do not want an accent piece on the ends.  In other words, do not have your strip set start or finish with an accent piece.

This is the part of the process that might seem pretty boring at first, but as your strips sets come together you will get the first true glimpse of how your fabrics will look together.  Note whether fabrics are standing out in a good or bad way.  Your accents should really pop from the backgrounds.

And remember to refer to week 1 instructions to know how many strips sets you will need if you have a specific quilt size in mind.

We'll see you next week, to create our blocks and create the layout that makes the design pop!

Slowly Emerging

Thank-you so much for all your kind words over the past week.  With everything that was going on it was wonderful to get your support. I am slowly coming out of the fog that was mere survival. And, in case you were wondering, the girls are now healthy and Hubby has started to feel some relief in his pain.  He's got a ways to go in healing, but he is no longer glued to the couch.  Hell, he even turned off the TV the other day he was finally so bored.

I did get some good quilting in on the weekend.  Some friends offered to take the girls for a playdate so between that and naptime I had nearly a full day of quilting.  It did wonders for my to-do list and my emotional health. First on the list was the samples for my class.  It starts on Friday and there are one or two spots left if you are in town. Once that was done I managed to get ahead on the Quilt Along project.  I will be coming back to that next week. I am quite excited by how it is coming together!

One thing I did want to announce at this point is that there will be a give-away for those participating in the quilt along.  At the end of the posts I will ask you to share with me the progress you've made  - whether it's just picking fabric or a completed quilt.  I will draw a name of participants to receive some inspiring treats. And no, there will be no hints as to the prize.

We'll see you back here next week.

Quilt Along Week 2 - Attack of the Rotary Cutter

This week is all about cutting your fabrics. It seems straight forward, it's just cutting fabric, right? This design is not dependent on evenly cut strips, but they do need to be cut straight. Check out my handy videos for my tips and technique on doing this. As always, email or comment if you have any questions.

Cut all of your fabric in lengthwise strips (from selvage to selvage).  Ensure that all your ends are straight. There is no prescribed width to the strips, they are all random widths. Mine ranged from about 1.5 inches to 3 inches, but I didn't measure at all. From each 1/2 meter (yard) of fabric I would aim for 8-10 strips.

Once your fabric is cut you will get a better idea of how the fabrics work together. If any are jumping out at you as not playing nice with the others now is the time to replace them.  For example, I'm not so sure about the one for mine that is second from the left in the top photo. It might be too light.  But I haven't decided yet. It isn't a light, light one. In the photo below you can see the one third from the right that is lighter.  I doubted that one and kept it in to great effect.

Next week will be sewing the strips and pressing.  Yes, pressing. In the meantime, put a fresh blade in your rotary cutter and cut away.

If you are quilting along with me please let me know.  I would love to be able to share your work with everyone else. I'm going to add a blogroll of participants on the site.  If you don't have a blog then you can also link to a Flickr photostream.  And speaking of Flickr, is there an interest setting up a group for the Quilt Along?  

We are fighting the flu in this house.  That means I will get lots of quilting done or none at all!