My First Tutorial

Pierina is still away down south so just Maria, Joyce and I got together to do some quilting. 

I am making a 6 1/2" - 9 patch square the easy way.

You start off with 2- 7 1/2" squares of fabric.  This means that your initial square is 1 1/2 " larger than your finished 9 patch square.  Place them right sides together and sew down the side of each paired square.

After you have sewn down both sides you cut the square into 3 equal parts.  So I cut it into 2 1/2" strips

The 2 outer strips are sewn together but the one in the center has no stitching.  Open the two in the center up and sew one piece to each of the other pieces.

This is what you should end up with.

Now put them together so that they can be sewn.

All pressed and ready to be sewn together.

Now sew them together and run the seam over the end with the 3 pieces as above.

 Now cut these apart into 3 equal pieces again and when you separate them you will see that they will go together into a nine patch block.

Sew these together and you have perfect 6 1/2 inch 9 patch block without cutting out 2 1/2" squares.

I hope anyone can understand this tutorial, if not please email me and I will help out any way that I can.

This was a demo at the Guild this month and I think it is really great because you make two at once, mirror images of each other.

These can be made any size just as long as you make the initial square divisible by 3.

Maria is making a placemat so we had fun helping her put the squares together.  We laid them out on the batting so that she could just pick them up and start sewing and be able to keep them in order.

We did do a lot of sewing.  Joyce is making the border for her rag quilt.  I thought I had a picture of it but I was using a different camera and I guess I didn't take a picture. 

 

Joyce has the fabric turned inside out so you can't see the beautiful red colour that it is.  It is going on a sporty denim and flannel rag quilt.

Now I have to put my 9 patch squares together.  Hopefully I will get my project finished today and take a picture of it.

Peggy.



Charmed Hearts

This is the latest quilt that I have been working on.  It is called Charming Hearts from the Moda Bake Shop.  There are so many patterns on this site that it is hard to choose a quilt to make but because there are so many it is nice to have such a good selection. 

Charming Hearts

I used the same fabric that the pattern called for except for the borders.  You were suppose to use a charm pack and a layer cake and then a white background.  The fabric is called Bliss, and you were suppose to use the layer cake for the border and cut it up into strips so that the border exactly matched the hearts, but I couldn't find one in town so I chose Bliss fabric in the white and red and put an almost solid red to break it up.

I put more applique hearts on the quilt then it had in the pattern and I doubled some up and used small and large hearts.  To get the small hearts I used the inside cut out piece of the "heat & bond" from the large hearts so there was very little waste of the heat and bond.

I really like to personalize my quilts so I have to make some change to the pattern.

I had Wendy Currie quilt it on her long-arm machine.  She did a beautiful job.  It was much to big for me to do on my machine, as it is 69 x 85. 

Peggy.

Saturday Workshop Continued

I finished both placemats that we started at the workshop and you can see how they go together.

This is Number 1

This is Number 2

Here they are side by side so that you can see how the fabric is cut to give you 4 units.  (There are 2 missing as Maria is binding them.) These are made with 24 - 6 1/2 inch squares.

It is hard to convince people that quilting involves moving fabric around.  It looks a lot more complicated then it really is.  There are a lot of tricks involved to make the finished product.

Peggy.

Saturday Workshop

On Saturday I attended a work shop where we made placemats for "Empty Bowls Caring Hearts".  It is an organization to make people aware of hunger in the world.

There were between 10-15 women there over the course of the day.  We were served a beautiful lunch of homemade soup and breads.  Good fellowship was abundant as well. 

Maria and I made 4 placemats between us.  It is a simple pattern using 24 - 6 1/2 inch squares that you sew together and then cut off part of one side and sew it to the other and then cut off one end and sew it to the other end.  We laughed because you cut the fabric up into squares, sew it back together and then cut it up again.  We used the scraps for the binding.

Peggy.