Postcard quilt progress

I've been working on my Postcard Quilt (Designed by Liza Prior Lucy) from Kaffe Fassett's book "Quilt Road". Since many of the original fabrics are no longer being produced, I've been doing substitutions. Its quite tricky, because I want the quilt to have the same feel as their version. 

Curio Jelly Roll Hexagon Quilt Tutorial

Figure 1: Curio Jelly Roll Hexagon Quilt top

I've had a few enquiries about my Curio Jelly Roll Hexagon quilt, so I've decided to post a tutorial on how I made the quilt. It took quite a lot of fiddling and calculations to work out the pattern pieces using jelly roll strips, so to save others time, here are the basic instructions and ingredients. The finished quilt is approximately 65" x 77". The quilt is inspired by the My Fair Lady quilt by Brandon Mably from Kaffe Fassett's book, "Quilt Road".

Ingredients:

• 60° triangle quilting ruler template (with a base width of at least 6”)
• 1 Jelly Roll (40 strips of 2.5” x 42-44”)
• 1.75 yards of various fabric prints for cutting 30 additional jelly roll size strips (Fat quarters ARE NOT suitable because you need to cut strips of at least 42" wide)
• 2 yards of solid fabric for background
• 1 yard printed fabric for border (optional)
• 0.75 yards of fabric for binding
• 4.5 yards of fabric for backing

Step 1 (assembling the strip sets)(Use 0.5” seams):

One needs to make 46 banded hexagons in total, so one has to cut extra jelly roll size strips from additional printed fabric yardage. If a typical jelly roll contains 40 strips, and one needs 3 strips to make 2 full hexagons, thus one can only make 26 hexagons from the strips supplied in one large jelly roll (40 divided by 3 = approx. 13 sets of 3). Thus, I had to cut another 30 jelly roll size strips (2.5" x 42") from extra fabric yardage, which means that I needed at least another 1.75 yards (60") of printed fabric in total (in different prints) to cut the extra strips. I also did not use some of the Moda Curio jelly roll strips because they were too dark (black, brown, dark orange) for my liking, so I replaced it with my own cut strips. Thus in total one needs 69 (2.5" x 42") jelly roll size strips. So you could buy 2 jelly rolls to make the quilt top, and throw out the strips that are too light or dark (or ugly).

Once you have enough jelly roll strips (69 strips), make bundles of 3 strips (as shown in Figure 2). Make sure that there is enough contrast between the strips in each bundle.

Figure 2: Bundles of 3 jelly roll strips

Because I wanted the striped bands in each hexagon to be the same width, I had to shorten the width of the Jelly Roll Strips. I did this by using a larger seam allowance of 0.5" (instead of the usual 0.25") rather than cutting the strips. Thus, I ended up with 23 sewn sets of 3 strips (Figure 3). The outer bands of each sewn set ended up being 2" wide and the middle band was 1.5" due to the 0.5" seam allowance used (See Figure 5 later).

Figure 3: Sewn 3 strip sets

Step 2 (cutting the banded triangles to make up the hexagons):

Each hexagon is made up of 6 identical 60° triangles. As shown in Figure 4 below, one gets two different hexagons from each 3 strip set; the middle band will be the same print, while the inner and outer bands will be opposite.

Figure 4: Contrasting hexagon blocks obtained from a single strip set

I bought a Perspex 60 ° quilting triangle ruler template, which helped me to cut the triangle pieces accurately (see Figure 4). I made the 60° triangles to have a base of 6", which meant that that the height of the triangles was 5.25". This ensured that I could cut 12 triangles (6 up and 6 down) from each sewn strip set (See Figure 5).

Figure 5: Cutting the 60 degree triangles from the sewn 3 strip sets

I made sure that the top point (apex) of each of the 60° triangles was placed on the top of each of the strip sets (Figure 5). Thus when one cuts a triangle, the top band is 2” wide, the middle band is 1.5” wide and the widest bottom band is 1.75”. Thus the height of each 60° triangle = 2” + 1.5” +1.75” = 5.25” and the base width = 6”. One must cut 6 triangles up and 6 triangles down from each strip set, using the up and down placement shown in Figure 5.

Thus the 23 sewn strip sets must be each cut into 12 triangles (6 up and 6 down) to produce 46 hexagons.

Step 3 (cutting the solid background triangles):

In total one must cut 130 solid background 60° triangles, with a base of 6” and a height of 5.25”. The easiest way to do this is to cut 5.25” strips of the solid background fabric (from the fabric width 42-44”), and then cut 6 triangles up and 6 triangles down using the triangle ruler template.

Step 4 (assembling the hexagons) (Use 0.25” seams):

From each set of 6 banded triangles, stitch 3 together along diagonal seams using usual 0.25” seam allowance and press seams to one side (Figure 6). Repeat for the remaining 3 triangles (Figure 6). Now stitch two halves of each hexagon (consisting of 3 joined triangles) together using usual 0.25” seam and press seam to one side. 

Figure 6: Assembling the hexagon blocks

Do this for all 46 hexagons and then arrange the hexagon blocks layout as desired (Figure 7). Make sure that there are alternating coloumns concisting of of 6 or 7 stacked hexagons (See Figure 1).

Figure 7: Planning the hexagons layout

Step 5 (assembling the quilt) (Use 0.25” seams):

Attach 2 solid background triangles to the opposite vertical edges of each hexagon to form a diamond shape block (Figure 8). The border rows of hexagons will only require the attachment of one solid background triangle (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Attaching background triangles

Join the diamond blocks diagonally to form long  diagonal strips (Figure 9). The join the diagonal strips to one another to build the quilt (Figure 9). In some cases you will need to assemble partial hexagons from the solid background triangles in order to fill gaps (See Figure 1). You will have to trim the upper and lower edges of the quilt using a rotary cutter to make it square.

Figure 9: Joining diamond blocks diagonally

Step 6 (add a border - optional):

Add a printed border using strips of any desired width, I used 2.5” strips to make the border (See Figure 1). Finished quilt size is approximately 65” x 77”.

Tutti-Frutti Baby (Granny Square) Quilt finished

I finished piecing and machine-quilting my Tutti-Frutti baby granny square quilt. Quilting is very therapeutic when grieving. The finished quilt size is about 32 x 40 inches. The quilt is made from 2.5 inch fabric blocks only which are trimmed to fit into a square (8.5 inch) on-point blocks.

I chose red binding to bring it all together, and a pretty china-blue rose print for the backing.

French nine-patch finished and 500 quilt blocks fun

In my summer December vacation, I finally had some dedicated time for quilting again. I managed to finish basting and quilting my French Nine-patch quilt top, made with a couple of different Moda French General charm packs.

I backed the quilt with some Moda 3 Sisters Paris Flea Market fabric that was on sale from Hancocks of Paducah (my favourite online store, their prices, shipping costs and customer service are unbeatable). I did simple stitch-in-the-ditch quilting only on the large patches, which has made the quilt nice and soft.

I recently bought a fantastic little quilting book (at the university academic book store?!) called 500 Quilt Blocks by British authors Lynne Goldsworthy (http://lilysquilts.blogspot.com/) and Kerry Green (http://verykerryberry.blogspot.com/). This a fantastic book with excellent instructions and beautiful examples using modern and vintage fabrics. 

I find this book very inspiring and I would like to make a sampler quilt with my Kaffe Fassett fabric stash sometime soon. At the moment I'm playing around with Granny Squares block from their book with my small floral prints fabric stash.

Of course Sweety-Bird is assisting me: by pulling out all my pins and throwing it on the floor, and using the cotton reels as toys...

Pinwheel quilt finished at last!

 

I finished quilting and binding my water-lilies pinwheel quilt this week! It took almost 2 years for me to finish this quilt. I hand-quilted the centre of the quilt and the outer border I machine quilted. It is the first one of my quilts that I have quilted myself. The finished quilt is 83" x 83".

I used a Kaffe Fassett print, bekah in blue, for the back of the quilt. I used another Kaffe Fasset print, mirage stripe in blue, for the binding.

Here is another shot of the quilt on our bed. Unfortunately it has been raining so I can't take a photo of the whole quilt outside. Here is the link to the whole finished quilt top. It feels good to get such a big project finished! Yay!

French nine-patch quilt top finished

I finished sewing the French nine-patch quilt top yesterday. I'm not going to quilt this one myself, I'll have to get some quotes from the professionals. In the meantime, I'm going to make another pieced quilt top with all the leftover lighter coloured charm squares, I'm busy deciding on the pattern now.

French nine-patch quilt progress

I finished making 120 5"x5" nine-patch blocks, and started playing with the French General charm pack squares for the layout for my French nine-patch quilt. I purchased 5 Moda French General charm packs in total: 2 x La Belle Fleur; 1 x Le Petite Odile; 1 x Château Rouge; 1 x Esprit de Noel. I only used the darker background squares. The nine-patches were made from half-yard pieces from the La Belle Fleur and Chateau Rouge ranges.

I am about half-way with assembling the quilt-top now :)

I also managed to start knitting a cardigan. I chose a simple Kaffe Fassett motive from his Pattern Library book.