Piecing – Page 33 – Artquiltmaker Blog

Stars for San Bruno #2 in progress

The ‘paint was barely dry’ on SfSB #1, but I got busy putting the Stars for San Bruno #2 quilt together on Sunday. I had done a few smaller projects on Friday and Saturday afternoon and decided that Sunday morning was the day for SfSB #2.

Putting all of the blocks on the floor and looking at them worked pretty well last time, so I did that again. I found that they logically divided themselves into 2 groups (generally right and left of the photo). Most of the blocks on the left are Sawtooth Stars and I decided to group them into one quilt. I saved the Stars on the right for the last quilt.

Once I had selected the blocks, I laid them out on some fabric that Sandy sent just to get an idea of what I was facing.

I could see right away that there would be a lot more open space in this quilt, because I didn’t have as many blocks left. This looks more like a starry night sky, I think.

The quilt didn’t really end up like this at all, but it was a starting point.

I could see from the layout above that I needed some of the blocks with the light background in lower corner.

More rearranging…

This is a technique that I call improvisational piecing. TFQ and I have used this process when working together on a quilt called She had to have her Latte, which was kind of a precursor to the Tarts Come to Tea. Isn’t it strange how I can relate all of my quilts to each other?

I kept rearranging disparate sized blocks and adding coping strips, corners and strips until the pieces fit together. This process is not for the faint of heart.

I decide where I am going to start and then march down or across the quilt.In this case, I started from the top and moved towards the bottom. I decided to put almost all of the blocks on point, so I added triangle corners to them. I also filled in the spaces with large pieces of fabric.

I was able to finish the top last night. I wanted to get the parts off of my design floor and I didn’t want to have to remember what went where. There was a lot of partial seaming, so it was important to me to get the pieces together correctly.

As you can see, I added a few pinwheel blocks in different sizes. I was inspired by the very center of TFQ’s block (upper right), though I realized that I didn’t make them exactly like hers.

My first thought after sewing on the last line of blocks (right) and looking at the whole piece was that it needed a border. Sigh.

Pavers

Pavers is ready to quilt. I am not sure the name suits, but that is what it is. It will be a gift.

This pattern is based on a photo I saw on Flickr from Green Couch Designs and related to the Purple quilt I finished a few weeks ago. Both on the Purple Quilt and this quilt I wanted to work with asymmetrical borders. I wasn’t happy with the border on the purple quilt, so I tried again on this one. I think I want to work with the border a little bit more and will make one more quilt in this pattern.

This is an easy quilt to make and I basically finished all of the blocks by using them as leaders and enders.

The photo above has that lovely pink post-it on the top as a direction to the quilter. It just says what I have designated as the top. I do that for the back, too.

Above is a picture of it laying on my ‘design floor’ before I put the borders on. I was amazed at how much better the piece looked sewn together. The duplicate fabrics near each other didn’t seem to matter and the whole thing just came together.

This quilt was made from a group of fabrics I bought from the Fabricworm.

Flying Geese Tutorial

This is a thinking girl’s tutorial to making flying geese. Knowing how to make Flying Geese allows you to make Sawtooth Star blocks, Dutchman’s Puzzle blocks, borders and other parts needed for your quilts.

You are going to have to use the technique with your own measurements to make the geese that fit your project. There are many other ways to make flying geese.

Cut 2 Squares for each Flying Geese Element

This fabric will be used for the ‘wings’.

Draw diagonal line from corner to corner

Turn the squares over and draw a diagonal line from corner to corner. You will need to do this on all of the squares for your Flying Geese.

Cut background, or goose, fabric.

Lay first square that will be a wing on the goose (background) fabric and pin. Make sure the pin is out of the way. You will be sewing on that drawn line, so you will need to pin far enough away so the pin doesn’t interfere with the operation of the machine.

Sew along line and trim threads. I use a foot that has an arrow on it. I can line that arrow up with the drawn line and sew away.

Trim 1/4″ through the wing and the goose away from the sewn line as shown above. Press the wing so the front of the wing fabric is showing.

Place the second wing on the other side of the background fabric.

Sew and trim as above. Sew so that you cross the previous sewing line.

Press back the 2d wing and, voila’, you have a Flying Geese element.

You need four of these to make a Sawtooth Star or eight of them to make a Dutchman’s Puzzle.

FOTY 2011 Triangles – End of May

Here are so more triangles for FOTY 2011. I am not pressing and cutting them as fast since I am working on other projects, but I am working on them incrementally.

Quilt Class Sampler Blocks

This post is kind of a roundup of the good and the bad. No ugly today, as I use GREAT fabric. 😉

This Sawtooth Star block is one I use to teach Flying Geese. I love the Dutchman’s Puzzle block, but think starting students out with 4 Flying Geese as opposed to 8+ is much kinder.

The larger blocks are weird for me to make, because I like to make 6″ or 8″ blocks mostly. The good thing about making these giant blocks is that there is a lot of potential for fussy cutting and the Big Plain Jane print worked really well in this block. I tried to position the flower a little off center to add a bit of interest while not showcasing the white flower that is near the red flower on the print. I am really pleased with how cheerful this blocks looks. I am glad I am working in a turquoise/aqua and red palette.

The Card Trick block is a great block for practicing triangles. It includes both half and quarter square triangles. If you haven’t tried the Card Trick, it is a great block as long as you pick the right fabrics. I, as you can see, did not build in enough contrast between the background and the light fabrics. There are a lot of seams and triangles in this block and you have to lay it out and piece carefully, because it is easy to get mixed up.

As I work on this project I see these blocks set on point with red cornerstones. We’ll see as the time gets closer.

FOTY 2011 April 2011 Pieces

Here is the first group of triangles that will end up as Fabric of the Year 2011. I am doing something this year in that I am including many fabrics that I am using this year, but aren’t new. The large triangles are the new fabrics for this year and the small triangles are the fabrics that were already in my fabric closet, but were used in a quilt.

I have already realized that I am not going to be able to cut ALL fabrics that I use. I just am not organized enough. I haven’t developed the habit, but I am getting better.

I have the idea in my mind that I will make this more of a scrap quilt rather than arranging the fabrics carefully in a colorwash kind of order. I may not, though.

The other idea I have is to arrange it like Fons & Porter did in their Kalamkari Strippy.
We’ll see how I feel at the end of the year.

On the Design Wall

I have to clear off the design wall so I can create the samples and step outs for the quilt class. Taking a good look at the design wall made me realize that it is kind of being used as another dumping ground and more spring cleaning is required. So, before I clear it off, here is a tour.

Upper left: four patches. I cut scraps up into 2″ squares and sew them together into four patches. I use these patches as ‘Leaders and Enders’ a la Bonnie Hunter. This means that I sew together squares rather than just using scraps to start off my chain piecing. I do this so that I can accomplish something as I am starting and ending chain piecing.

Middle top: FOTY 2011 patches. More about these later.

Upper right: Sampler quilt patterns/red and aqua quilt. I may do something else with red and aqua, but the sampler is a good project for these fabrics since I can’t think of anything else.

Very upper right: Nine patch made by the Young Man when he was a Cub Scout. I want to do something significant with it, but haven’t decided what yet.

Lower left: more four patches in progress.

Middle middle: FOTY 2010 test piece. I would like to use it to test the border treatment I want to use for the Original Bullseye quilt. I think this test project will end up higher on the to do list sooner than I thought, because I need that space on the design wall.

Middle middle towards right: rectangles for another quilt like the purple quilt. Right now these bricks are being used as leaders and enders.

Next to this series of bricks is a Big T block that will be the front of a Teacher Pillow for the Science Teacher. I don’t like the name of that blocks. I don’t have a better name, but I think Big T is uninspired.

Bottom right: hexagon test piece.

Border: all around the border are things that I enjoy looking at. I have won 2 ribbons (right) in the far and distant past, but I like to look at them to remind myself that I am able to win ribbons.

I find that a good way to display ATCs is using those badge holders I get from conferences. It also prevents the badge holders from being thrown out. I like them for ATC display, because I can clip them together.The ATCs are small and this display makes more of an impact.

It is a little quilt art gallery that I can change easily. I can change both the configuration of the badge holders as well as the ATCs displayed very easily.

Zig Zaggy

I have been on a finishing jag since my post about projects on my mind. I want things out of the half finished stage. I want to feel ok about starting new projects, not that that is really a problem.

I am not finished with anything completely yet, but I am in the process. Three quilts are at the quilter and in the past few days I have finished two more, which will be dropped off at the quilter on the 25th.

I took the FOTY 2011 off of my portable design wall after finishing the back and, instead of taking the portable design wall down as planned, I put the Zig Zaggy quilt up. I have to say that I really, really like having 2 design walls. I only had two sides of the back to finish to make the back big enough to quilt the quilt. Since I was in finishing mode, I just sewed some extra pieces on to the back. Now I will make the binding and be done with it.

I like the front, and the back started out as a good idea, but I stopped working on it because sewing all of those leftover strips was a big pain. I am not doing that again. I am sure I can find a use for strips. I had a much better time finishing the FOTY 2010 back. I used large pieces and it was a lot easier. That is my new mantra for backs: big pieces of fabric.

Here is a the detail of the top. The top came out smaller than I thought. When I was working on it, it seemed huge. Now it seems tiny. Compared to the FOTY 2010, it is small. I guess it is all about perspective.

Zen Quiltmaking

I had an appointment with Colleen yesterday to talk about the quilting for the Frosted Stars, the Frosted Stars Leftovers and the Purple Quilt. I wanted to bring the Fabric of the Year 2010 top over as well, but I wasn’t able to even start the back. My life felt like it was spiraling into complete craziness this past week as things just continued to get heaped on to me. To add to the general life craziness, my work computer is acting up. It has been for awhile, but it reached new heights of not working on Wednesday afternoon and I lost patience. Nothing would load (web pages, local programs, nothing) and I could hear the hard drive churning away, which I knew was a very bad sign. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, completely and totally fed up, I went to my boss, told him him the problem and asked him if I could just read my email from home on Thursday if my computer was working the same way. He said if my iPad was faster, I should just go home and use that on Thurs. WOOHOO!

Sadly, his IT staff came in early and did a stopgap fix on my computer. It was much better on Thursday, so I had to stay at work instead of hang out at home with my iPad next to my sewing machine. 😉 Oh well.

The computer problems just added to my stress and in light of the craziness, I decided I had to be okay with not getting the back of the FOTY 2010 finished. I talked to Colleen and will bring it in two weeks when she is back in town and ready to quilt again. That means I have two weeks to finish the back.

This past week wasn’t a complete quiltmaking desert. I did get a break on Monday when I didn’t have to take the Young Man to his regular Monday appointment and I took the opportunity to finish the FOTY 2010 top! Yay! I feel so good about that.

All the diamonds were sewn together and the border strips were cut, so I just had to sew them on to the top. It took me a long time – about 3.5 hours. I never think that borders and backs are going to take long, but they always seem to take longer than I expect. Oh well.

I learned a couple of things making this top. First, my deadline was to piece the whole top at the CQFA Retreat. It turned out that I wasn’t ready to piece this whole top. Diamonds require finding my sweet spot of piecing. I had to develop a rhythm and a method and I hadn’t done it by the time I reached the retreat. Second, this was a top that needed me to take my time. I ripped out much of the piecing I sewed at the retreat. A lot of people don’t care about points being cut off and I am not going to beat myself up about every single point, but I absolutely don’t want my bad technique to distract viewers from the overall look of the quilt. Finally, this quilt needed to be pieced slowly and carefully.

I have been lamenting my pictures (my whole blog, really) lately and these two show great detail, but they are not great photography. I am pretty pleased with the color layout on the pink and white section.

The diamonds are not in perfect positions colorwise, but I have improved since FOTY 2009.

In the photo of the pinks and whites, I am really pleased that I clustered the whites in the corner. In FOTY 2009 I put them along the left side one on top of the other and I decided that wasn’t as effective in terms of the colorwash idea. It is very difficult to get a really smooth colorwash effect when using prints. As I said, I think I improved over last year.

My mom kept telling me to move diamonds AFTER I had already sewn them and finally I had to tell her to make her own colorwash quilt!

As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I will be making a block or two from Joel Dewberry fabric. I have the fat quarter laid out on my ironing board (see previous comments about horizontal space in my workroom!), because my design wall is full, and there is no horizontal space.

As I was finishing the FOTY, I kept pressing bits and pieces. When I was pressing the corner of the inner border on top of the JD fabric, I noticed how interesting this particularly corner looked with the JD fabric as the border. I didn’t want that active a print on the outside of this quilt, but I thought it was interesting.

Stealing Mom’s Thunder

I bought a lot of food fabric fat quarters (say that 3x really fast) for my mom last spring while she was taking care of Super G and trying not to lose her mind. This is one of the blocks she made with those food fabrics. She made a lot of blocks like the Corner Store pattern I talked about in the review of Pretty Little Mini Quilts, then she didn’t like them for the food quilt, so she redid them and this is block one of the result. Check her blog for progress.

FOTY 2010: Week of 2/7 Progress

I hung up FOTY 2009 in my hallway yesterday. It can be seen when people walk in the front door. I received a ton of compliments on it, which was very kind of people. I was planning to take it to work, but needed to solve a quick decorating dilema and decided to keep it at home for awhile. I have to think of something new to hang in my office as I am getting tired of seeing Seeing Red when I walk in.

In the meantime, I am still working on FOTY 2010 steadily, though I wasn’t able to do much more than unpick a few yellows this past week.

Pretty much, this is where I started this week. There were still lots of gaps in the blues, but I had started to piece the smaller pieces into larger. One can ‘chunk‘ this type of quilt in the piecing process, but not as easily, or for as long, as when piecing square or rectangular patches. At some point I had to piece long rows together.

Part of this has to do with the arrangement of this particular quilt. The colorwash type arrangement doesn’t lend itself well to piecing the patches into chunks of four patches, as I was able to do with the Eye Spy quilt.

Aren’t the blues behaving nicely? The placement is not ideal and I would do it differently if I had unlimited tints, hues, values and shades, but my FOTY rule is that I have to use what I have, and so far I am happy.

You can see, above, the whole blue section pieced.

I am heading towards the pink on the bottom. Now that the blues are behaving nicely, the pinks are becoming little brats. It reminds me of the Mandrakes in the book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. That big gap has reappeared in the pink area. Grrrr!

I have been contemplating the yellow and pink sections and doing a bit of playing with their arrangement. I am not terribly fond of a big line of greens or yellows or pinks slashing through the quilt. I prefer more of a blob arrangement (like the pinks are in the above photo – more of an organic shape). I am not sure at this moment how I will have them blend into each other – the blue to pink – if I do the blob arrangement. I don’t have enough yellows, greens and oranges to wash very completely. I think the green to yellow to orange is much easier, but there is a space consideration up towards the top. I’ll have to play around and see what works.

FOTY 2010 Progress

As soon as I arrived home from the retreat, I put up the portable design wall and organized the diamonds. They were pinned on the design wall, so I didn’t have to do much for the part that was already sewn. All the unsewn diamonds were just in the bag of pieces.

My next task was to put all of the reds and pinks back on the design wall. Above, I have put all the diamonds I could fit back up on the design wall.

I was really trying to fix that bottom right hand corner, which meant working on the blues.

The blues are getting better. I am making progress.

But not all of the blues are cooperating.

I felt like I needed to take a lot of pictures, so when I have succeeded in a section I have a record. I am nervous that I will need to recreate it if the diamonds get rearranged. I live with creative people and sometimes they think they are helping by rearranging things.

More with the blues.

Minor changes, but the piece is looking better.

Trying to make the leap from blue to green to yellow is proving to be a challenge. I don’t think there is such a thing as a dark yellow and that one green (smack in the middle of the photo above) is really sticking out and doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.

Back to it!

JulieZS on Patchwork Palooza Block 9Monday, September 22, 2025
It's fascinating how different this block looks depending on where the darker triangles go.
SueS on Patchwork Palooza Block 9Monday, September 22, 2025
Putting the darker pink near the center emphasizes a part of the block which might be overlooked otherwise. I like…
JulieZS on Patchwork Palooza Block 10Saturday, September 20, 2025
This is such a fun block, love your fabric choices!
JayeL on Motif MetamorphosisMonday, September 15, 2025
Thanks! I like the fabrics and they are a dream to work with. However, the colors and motifs are a…
JayeL on Patchwork Palooza 1Monday, September 15, 2025
Thanks! I am now keeping up with the ones released on Fridays.

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