One Down, One To Go...

I finished the "Nantucket" quilt by 1:30 yesterday afternoon. By 2:00, I had delivered it to Kathy at Sandy's Quilt Shop for the long-arm quilting portion of the job. I beat my deadline by a week!
One down, one to go.
I drove back home and started cutting the fabrics for the queen size quilt that's next up. I'm going to call it "Lavender Dreams". This one has to be at the shop by the second week in November, but I'm going to try to finish it by late next week. You know I'll let you know how I'm doing!

Cutting and sewing today...LOTS of half-square triangles. (You're going to love this pattern!) If I can keep Miss Snoopy Pants from sneaking a peek, I'll give you snapshots of my progress. (Just in case, I'll put them into my Flickr album for "What I'm Sewing Now". The link is in my right sidebar near the bottom. She'll never look there!)

The Chorale rehearses with the Concert Band this evening, so I'll be singing while Handsome plays in the percussion section. I'm really looking forward to it!

I hope you have a happy and creative day, too, my friends.

A Little More Detail...

My last photo post about the batik "Thank You Quilt" elicited a question that I thought I'd answer for everyone who might be curious (and then I'm going to share just a little ok, a LOT more detail about the quilt, too). Jillayne wrote a comment asking about the ruler:

Jillayne said...

The colours are fabulous - the perfect choice for the seaside! That ruler is pretty spiffy and the perfect thing for those Jelly Rolls - what's it called?It looks nifty, swifty to me! Have fun placing and re-arranging today!

Here are the labels so that you can see what you'll be shopping for...Creative Grids is the name of the manufacturer. (Don't forget - you can always click on any of my photos to enlarge them.)
The ruler I used for this quilt is called the 45º Double-Strip Half-Square Triangle Ruler, although there are rulers for other block configurations available, too. No math skills required. Just line up per instructions and cut. Easy Peasy!
This is what the entire ruler looks like. It has a 2 1/2" wide ruler running the entire length, so that you can cut your own strips from yardage - if you chose your own assortment instead of purchasing the pre-cut 2 1/2" jelly rolls. With all the stash I have, this part of the ruler will really come in handy in the future!

Then, once you've assembled one light and one dark strip together, you place the triangle part of the ruler on the fabric to cut the triangles. You only have to be sure to place the dotted line (it's located in the mid-point of each triangle) directly on your seam line between the two strips before you make your cuts with a rotary cutter. You can see how I cut the strips here.

Note: If you want the top of your triangle to be on the right - you need to cut your triangles with the BACK side of the fabric facing up (as I did with the triangle marked "light" below).

Likewise, if you want your triangle tops on the left side - cut your fabric RIGHT side up (like the triangle marked "dark" below).
Once you've cut your triangles (each strip will create light and dark triangles), you assemble a dark and a light triangle to make a square. (That's what quilters mean when they say "half-square triangles". When you put two halves together, you get a square!) Still no math required.

You'll notice that the dark triangle in this photo has a top on the left, and the light triangle has a top on the right. You need to do this or your triangles will not create squares when assembled.
When you place your next square, you'll want to be sure that you lay a light triangle next to a dark, and a dark next to the light as show above.
Four squares ready to be assembled into a block.
This is what the block will look like when it's sewn. I just laid the triangles closer together for this photo, and have not actually sewn it together yet.
These four blocks have been assembled and I'm showing you how I preview the layout. You want to be sure that you place lights next to darks when you assemble to quilt top so that the color values alternate.

One thing I wanted to mention is that I decided that all aspects of the block I'm making would be random. You could also take two sewn strips (four different fabrics), cut them into triangles and assemble using just those four different fabrics if you want. I actually think you use less fabric that way!
On Saturday, I headed over to Sandy's Quilt Shop and purchased my backing and sashing fabrics. I'm going to use the lighter color for the sashing on the front of the quilt, and the darker fabric will be my backing and binding.

Sunday really was a day of rest around here. Handsome and I took the dogs for a walk in our neighborhood. When we got back home, we pulled the cover off the pool and all four of us went swimming. It was a perfect way for the dogs to cool down, and we really enjoyed it, too.

I only spent enough time in the studio to cut more assembled strips for the quilt so that they'll be ready for me to make more blocks tomorrow. When I was finished with that, we gathered to watch football until dinner time. Dogs were fed and aired, we put on our riding gear and pushed out the Harleys to ride out for a meal. We even managed to avoid a rain shower that soaked our neighborhood while we were away! We got back home just in time for the kickoff of the Packers vs Vikings game. We've been in Florida for nearly ten years, but we'll always be Packers fans. (They won tonight! Yea!!!)

Thanks so much for your comments on this project. Just ask if you want to know something else, and I'll try not to be so wordy! I hope you each have a healthy and creative week, my friends. More tomorrow...

Cutting Triangles...

Thursday, I spent the day in the studio. I was just itching to start on the Thank You Quilt, and try out that new ruler I'd purchased. Remember that my roll of fabrics were already cut into 2 1/2" wide strips, so my first step was to sew one light strip and one dark strip together.

I always press as I go, which is really needed because you have to line the ruler up on the seam line.
After the ruler was in position on top of the fabric, all I had to do was cut along the wedges. See those little round sections on the ruler? They make it possible to cut past the end of the triangles. This is also a non-skid ruler, which really works! Once I figured out how everything was supposed to line up, I spent an hour or so just cutting triangles.
In order for my pattern to assemble correctly, I needed to cut half of my strips on the front side of the fabric and the other half of the strips on the back side. That allows me to have dark and light triangles for opposing sides of each square-in-a-block. (I tried to lay the block out so that you can see the half square triangles and how they assemble into each block.) After I figured out that I needed to do this, the hardest part was lining up the dotted line with the stitching line between the strips. (I'm kidding. That really wasn't hard at all!)

After I had an assortment of triangles cut, I could play around with arranging the fabrics. That's always a fun part. I just had to try it with the first few strips as soon as I'd cut them.
So, then, I finished cutting all the strips and arranged them according to light or dark - the value of the fabric at the top of each two-strip triangle - and whether they point left or point right.
Here's the first block for the quilt - all sewn together and pressed. It will measure 8" square when it's sewn into the quilt. One down...I'm not sure how many more to go.
This gives you a pretty good idea what the quilt might look like. I haven't sewn blocks together yet, so I'll still be rearranging a bit. I've made nineteen random blocks so far out of one jelly roll. Of course, I'll keep taking more pictures and will share them with you.

As I'm sewing this quilt and then looking back at the completed blocks, I'm really glad that I chose this fabric line. The colors remind me of the grey clapboard siding on the exteriors of the Nantucket homes, the blue of the water, the tans of the sand dunes and the earthy cobblestones. I think it's working out to be the perfect choice for the quilt I'm creating for our Island hostess. What do you think?