One Piece at a Time

Triangle in a Square Rulers…part 2

 

Today I’m going to demo the Quilt in a Day Ruler that makes this same patch. What I really like about this ruler and all the Quilt in a Day rulers is that you always make your patch just a little on the big side. The rulers then allow you to trim you block so that they are exactly right for piecing together. The drawback to this ruler is that you can only use it to make this patch in the 3” (finished) and 4” (finished) sizes.

The method for cutting is pretty much the same as the Tri-Recs. Cut you large triangles.

Layer your small triangle fabric right sides together and cut a rectangle.

Cut these rectangles in half along the diagonal to yield two small triangle sets.

 

To sew, lay out your triangles. Flip the right smaller triangle onto the large triangle.

 


 

With this ruler the tip of the large triangle is used to align your pieces.

Sew and press toward the smaller triangle.

To place the second small triangle I aligned the piece to the top of the large triangle just like before.

Sew and press open.

With this ruler set you have a square ruler with the large triangle marked on it. Place this on top of your finished patch and align the ruler to your large triangle. Trim to the correct size.

With this ruler I found that I get a perfect ¼” at the top of the large triangle. This made sewing it to other blocks a cinch and it wasn’t hard to be accurate. Here I combined four of these units with some four patches to make this lovely block.

I can see from the picture that my smaller triangles have some variation…Sigh…like I said they both have plusses and minuses.

Triangle in a Square Rulers

Disclaimer: Let me just start off by saying that I am not that great a piecer and all y’all might have better ways of doing this than I do. Please leave comments letting us all know what works for you because that’s what this here blog thing is really good for.

One of the more challenging piecing “units” is something that people call the Triangle in a Square. I find these really tricky so I have two rulers for this. I like each one but they both have their drawbacks. The first one I’m showing here is the Tri-Recs from Wrights.

This ruler is really great because it allows you to make this unit in several sizes and has a “magic angle” cut that helps you align your pieces very nicely. It also has awesome instructions.

Here I am using this to make a 3” (finished) Triangle in a Square unit. For my large triangle I cut a 3 ½” strip of light fabric. I lined the ruler up and made these two cuts.

For the smaller triangles I used two 3 ½” strips of fabric layered right sides together.

I made the first cuts to get the triangle.

Then I cut the “magic angle” which really helps when you align to sew.

To sew I lay out my pieces.

I flipped the left smaller triangle onto the large triangle

And aligned the corners like this.

From here I just sewed and pressed and repeated on the other side.

Along with five other 3 ½” blocks I was able to make this star.

If you look really close you can see that I wasn’t too accurate with my Triangle in a Sqaure units. Even though it was easy to align the triangles for piecing I found it hard to be consistent with getting a good ¼” seam along the top. Tomorrow I have a ruler to show you from Quilt in a Day that I also like for these units. I think it is more accurate but it only comes in two sizes…

Maybe I just need to learn to be more careful….sigh.

Spring Break

Hi Friends. Today is the very last day of spring break for my kiddos so I'm putting off ruler tutorials until tomorrow and Thursday. This is a shot of my daughter's (daughter included)spring break project. She loves to paint and has gotten very serious about it in the last year. We finally decided she needed her own place for painting so we are cleaning out a corner of the living room and setting up a small studio space for her. I'm almost as excited as she is since her current work area is the dining room table and I'm kinda digging the idea of having my morning coffee without having to look at a giant pile of painting supplies.

Design Wall Monday

Happy Monday Everyone!

Here are a couple of views from my design wall/table this fine spring morning.

In the top photo I have some blocks for two projects I have going. I’m messing around with a couple of rulers for these and I will have some tutorials this week on that.

The second picture is a shot of my work area right now. I am finishing up appliquéing the borders onto my latest medallion quilt.

Head on over to Judy’s blog to see what everyone else is up to. Be sure to check back this week for ruler tutorials.

The WINNER is...

Fran, who wrote

"Unlike everyone else, I kind of dread spring, because it is the precursor of summer. Summer in Mississippi is NOT my favorite thing. The heat alone is not really the problem, it's the humidity that gets you. It's energy draining and prickly and stickly...but the sweet cool of air conditioning wisteria to azaleas and so much more...just don't think about the oncoming summer months!"

I have to say I kinda agree, I'm not a fan of heat. Plus, I feel a little guilty quilting all the time when the weather is nice.

Yesterday's Block as a Mini Quilt

After playing around with this funky setting method all week I decided to set my Inspired By Tradition block this way. Makes a cute mini quilt don't you think?

Check back later to see who won the book.

Inspired By Tradition Book- A- Round

Welcome to my little stop on the Book-A-Round for Kay Mackenzie’s new book Inspired By Tradition from That Patchwork Place. I’ve had my copy for a few weeks now and I have to say this is a real beauty of a book. Not only does it have 50 patterns in FIVE sizes each but there are some absolutely awesome instructions in there.

As many of you know I am particularly fond of starching and pressing my appliqué shapes before I sew them. The big problem with this style of appliqué is that you do have to spend a LOT of time slaving over the hot iron before you ever get to stitching. Kay has beautifully photographed section on back basting appliqué. And just look at her result!

So I thought I would give this a little try. Here are some pictures of my first attempt.

Here is my finished block.Seriously folks this is my first try!

It really is true…if you really want to get to the stitching part of appliqué as fast as possible this is a great way to do it. I am definitely adding this technique to my bag of tricks!

I have a copy of Kay’s book courtesy of That Patchwork Place to give away today. Just leave a comment telling us what you are most looking forward to now that spring is here. We are all just a teeny bit tired of winter by now!

I will be back tomorrow evening to announce the winner.

I will probably be back in the morning to show you my finished project from this cute block…what can I say…I am sometimes called the MANIC quilt blogger….mostly by my family.

Great Balls of Fire...I've been NOMINATED!

This morning I was I was innocently reading my e-mail when I read one by blog reader Tammie. She said she voted for me. SO I wrote back saying something like "Huh?"

After a little of web snooping I found out that I've been nominated in the Best Designer category at SewCalGal's Golden Quilter Award 2011....Eeep!

Then I read the names on the list....and almost swooned....double Eeeep!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU SewCalGal

Oh and by the way, please vote, there is a button in the upper right hand side of the blog that goes right there. It goes through March 31.

Just as soon as I can find SewCalGal's e-mail I am going to send her an e-mail if I don't swwon again first.

Funky Setting Part Two

I’m just loving this little quilt. It’s kind of reminding me of chocolate petit fours.

Now that you have your border fabric stitched onto the front of your quilt block you will be able to see the outline of the border on the front of the border fabric. It’s a little hard to see in this picture but you get the idea.

Now you can very carefully trim the border fabric away from the front of the quilt block.

Here’s what it looks like all trimmed. At this point it’s a good idea to evaluate whether or not you like your fabric combo. I originally had a really busy paisley on this but it was bugging me so I switched to my go to brown. By the way that fabric is a Moda Bella solid called “Hershey”…I just HAD to buy several yards of that!

After you have trimmed the border fabric flip your block over and trim the background as well.

Here’s what it looks like all done on the back.

To finish the edge I made some 3/8” bias stems out of the pink stripe. To glue baste I place a little glue along the stitching on the front.

Here are a couple of shots of the bias trim getting applied.

Here it is all trimmed with bias.

From here I just made eight more pink berries and some more leaves and appliquéd them on. I placed the berries over the unfinished corners so I would have to finish any of the bias stems.

Let’s hear it for chocolate petit fours!

DON'T FORGET today is day three of the Book-a-Round hosted by Kay Mackenzie at All About Appliqué. Make sure you visit !

Funky Setting Anyone?

I had a bunch of fun coming up with this way of doing a funky appliqué setting. Here’s how I did it.

To draw the outline of the border I used a 24” x 24” piece of vellum. Vellum is very useful for this kind of thing because it’s durable and translucent. Before you start designing your border trace enough of your block pattern onto the vellum so you can align it later.

First trace the first 1/8 of the pattern .

Then fold along the diagonal and trace this branch to make a corner.

Now that you have a ¼ of the pattern you can fold along the horizontal and vertical lines to trace the whole thing. As you can see it took a couple of tries for me to get the size right.

Now place you quilt block face down onto the pattern. Turn it over and make sure the block aligns with the pattern in the center.

Trace the border design onto the back of the block using a marking pencil or pen.

Cut a square of border fabric to the appropriate size.You might need to gauge this using your pattern and block. It's probably a good idea to cut a slightly larger square than you need.

Now place the block face down onto the back side of your border fabric and pin all around. Stitch along the drawn line with a running stitch.

Check back tomorrow for how I finished this up...

DON'T FORGET today is day two of the Book-a-Round hosted by Kay Mackenzie at All About Appliqué. Make sure you visit !