My daughter, Jill, found a picture on the internet of a lovely quilt and printed a picture of it out, and cut the picture up. She figured out that the quilt had been made with a striped material, and went to town to buy some and try her hand at it. She told me about it and posted pictures on facebook so I could see her progress on her creation. I was in awe of what she was doing and decided to try my hand at it. Above is a picture of the two yards of striped material I bought along with a coordinating print. Below is a farther away view of the same thing. And--I have discovered that I must have a smudge on my camera lens. This is my old digital camera.
Below is a close-up with a yardstick to show the repeat across the fabric.
After doing some quilting engineering I determined that I want to make my first triangle cut of fabric with a dark red violin in the center of it. I bought a Fons and Porter triangle to help me do the cutting. If I were better at quilt blogging, I would have taken a picture of it to show you.I also put a brand-new blade in my rotary cutter. Wow, did it work nice. Why do I ever use dull, knicked blades?
But first I must cut a straight line through the bottom of the area below the violin. I am rather nervous about making a mistake, so I decided to use scisssors.
Here is the section I cut off. Now to get those violins centered. They are about 11 inches apart, so the size of this triangle will determine the size of the other triangles.
And, eureka, I have cut a triangle! What was I so afraid of?
Methinks the picture below is out of place. It happens to be one of the other blocks.
By putting four of my violin triangles together, I have come up with a block that looks like this:
And here is another block:
I should have taken a few more pictures. The main blocks are the ones that have the base of the triangles cut on the straight grain of the fabric (parallel to the selvedge--were you listening in home ec. class?) Then there are triangles that are cut from the areas in between the main blocks that have their base on the cross-grain of the fabric. The stripes on them run up and down, and I managed to cut them as mirror images of each other. When you add them to the original four squares, they end up looking like this:
I discovered that there is a certain order to adding the outside triangles, and the block above is wrong. In the next pictures you will see that by doing those outside triangles right, you get more designs between the squares.
When I laid these out on my kitchen island, I really began to get excited when I saw the designs forming between the blocks! Out of my two yards of striped fabric, I got ten main square blocks, but only enough other triangles to add to five of them. So, back to Joann Fabrics, where I bought another 1 1/2 yards so I would have enough of those triangles to finish them off. I will get some main blocks out of it, too, which I will probably put together a different way with sashing or something.
Here is the section I cut off. Now to get those violins centered. They are about 11 inches apart, so the size of this triangle will determine the size of the other triangles.
And, eureka, I have cut a triangle! What was I so afraid of?
Methinks the picture below is out of place. It happens to be one of the other blocks.
By putting four of my violin triangles together, I have come up with a block that looks like this:
And here is another block:
I should have taken a few more pictures. The main blocks are the ones that have the base of the triangles cut on the straight grain of the fabric (parallel to the selvedge--were you listening in home ec. class?) Then there are triangles that are cut from the areas in between the main blocks that have their base on the cross-grain of the fabric. The stripes on them run up and down, and I managed to cut them as mirror images of each other. When you add them to the original four squares, they end up looking like this:
I discovered that there is a certain order to adding the outside triangles, and the block above is wrong. In the next pictures you will see that by doing those outside triangles right, you get more designs between the squares.
When I laid these out on my kitchen island, I really began to get excited when I saw the designs forming between the blocks! Out of my two yards of striped fabric, I got ten main square blocks, but only enough other triangles to add to five of them. So, back to Joann Fabrics, where I bought another 1 1/2 yards so I would have enough of those triangles to finish them off. I will get some main blocks out of it, too, which I will probably put together a different way with sashing or something.
The quilt I want to make will hang in the area above the headboard of our bed. We have had a green pinwheel quilt hanging there for nearly ten years, so it is time for a change!
I will be updating you on my progress! I have been so thoroughly intrigued by it!
2 comments:
Wow!! That looks so much better like that then the original pattern. I'm impressed that you figured it all out. Great job!
Great idea, those blocks look fun! I'm trying to get everything sorted and packed so don't have time to quilt just yet, but I'm sure thinking about it! =)
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