A Very Quilty Day

All those triangles are stitched together and the setting triangles cut out.  I have a setting triangle ruler, but the smallest it goes to is 6-inch blocks and mine are 5.  So I had to do the math. Not too big a problem with calculator in hand and the magic number 1.41.  Either multiply or divide by it.

Many of you already know how to do setting triangles, but some readers are newer. Old time quilters, skip this paragraph. For the side triangles, a square to be cut into quarter triangles is needed so that the straight grain fabric ends up on the outside edge of the quilt; for the corners a square to be cut in half is needed so that the two outside corner edges are the straight grain. My squares are 5 inches finished (5 1/2 unfinished).  For the side triangles I will need  to make a square equal to the diagonal of the finished block plus seam allowance.  To get the diagonal, multiply 5 by 1.41 then add 1 1/4 inch (another magic number to remember for making quarter square triangles –QSTs) for seam allowance.  My diagonal is 7.05–7 to be practical, plus 1 1/4. So I cut squares 8 1/4 and cut diagonally from corner to corner both ways. I needed two squares to make the 8 side triangles.  Moving on to the corner triangles. The diagonal of the square to be cut will be the measure of the finished quilt squares (5 inches). To see what size square to cut, divide the diagonal by 1.41 then add seam allowance; for half square triangles (HSTs) add 7/8 inch. Another magic number.  Five divided by 1.41 is 3.54 which I round to 3 1/2 and added 7/8, so I cut squares 4 3/8 inches, then make one cut diagonally from corner to corner.

I am surprised to see that I will be able to add two borders to enlarge the quilt without overpowering the middle. I think the reason it will work is that the border colors are so much lighter than most of the triangles. I had a pink I’d wanted to work in, but didn’t like it in any widths that I tried, even very, very narrow.

The second project for my quilty day was was to finish blocks for guild tomorrow. This is not procrastination…I have been thinking design thoughts since the Michael Miller neon fabric was handed out at last month’s guild meeting. First I played with the Design Tool at Threadbias.

Since it is a new fabric line, I didn’t have exact fabrics in my virtual stash, but chose the dot, which wasn’t neon at all, and colors as close as I could come to the solids. I made several designs, but chose this one to make. The next photo is the fabric version.

I want to say that the light fabric is really yellow! I don’t know what my camera was “thinking.”  My direction changed between designing and sewing, but since I was making only one block, it didn’t matter. (I said “I designed…”; however, there could be a traditional block out there just like this. If anyone knows of one, do let me know its name and source.)

Then I had fabric left over, so I decided to make more blocks.  I thought to make stripes and then make a pinwheel with my “curves for squares” ruler. I’d really wanted the stripes to go around and not straight across, but didn’t have enough fabric to make two sets, so played around with layouts and ended up with this:

And then since I still had fabric, I began to play with made fabric and “slice and insert.”

I had really wanted one more black strip from the left, but the block was shrinking instead of growing, and I needed 12 1/2 x 12 1/2, so I stopped.  I can see that there is some new math to learn in order to know how large a piece to start out with. I also don’t think I’ll try the slicing again with defined lines–too hard to match them up on odd angles.

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