And the mystery quilt continues.......
In week #2 I was able to begin the actual stitching of the quilt top. My first task was to pair the 2 1/2” strips with one light fabric and one dark fabric and stitch them together along the longest edge into a strip set. I then cut each strip set into 4 - 4 1/2” x 8 1/2” rectangles for a total of 66 - two will be left over as I will use 64 in the construction of the blocks. I also cut 6 - 4 1/2” squares which I set aside for another use in the construction of the top.
Next I took the rectangles and placed them with the light strip on top. I then placed a background fabric square on top of the right side and used my Angler 2 tool to stitch a diagonal line. After trimming that seam to 1/4” and pressing it open I could begin to see the quilt pattern take shape. I can also see that I will have plenty of leftover pieces when I am done so at this point I am not throwing anything away.
Week #3 was fairly simple with some no-mind sewing. I made 66 half-square triangles by placing a background square and an accent square right sides together and stitching a diagonal line from corner to corner again using the Angler 2 tool. This tool eliminates the need to draw a diagonal line on which to sew. I then trimmed the seam allowance to 1/4” and pressed towards the accent fabric.
Three steps were included in the instructions for week #4 making it the most time consuming part of the process so far. (I was so glad that I had opted for the large throw size instead of the king size!) The first step involved sewing a background square to the bottom of a half-square triangle and then pressing the seam toward the half-square triangle. This was again a bit of no-mind sewing in making these 66 units.
Next I stitched the long side of one of these units to the long side of the unit made in week #2. This was trickier as the diagonals needed to form a point at the bottom. After reaching for the seam ripper a couple of times I figured out how to make the adjustments that I needed before I stitched. These blocks were supposed to measure 8 1/2” square and I did take the time to square them up.
In the final step I stitched four of those squares together to form a larger 16 1/2” square. I made 12 large blocks which required 48 of the 66 smaller 8 1/2” blocks. Now I can’t wait to see what I will do with the remaining blocks.
Since the center blocks of this quilt are set on point it is necessary to have setting triangles so that the quilt top has straight edges. As a result the instructions for week #5 were to make those sections. Now I am beginning to see how I’ll be using the extra blocks that I’ve made! I stitched together two 8 1/2” blocks and one 4 1/2” strip square four times and labeled them block A.
This same combination of blocks was stitched in another arrangement to make two additional blocks that I labeled block B.
Then I took a 16 1/2” block and stitched two half-square triangles to the sides to make block X. I did this twice.
Then I chose two more 16 1/2” blocks and labeled them block Y. These blocks do not look like the setting triangles that I am used to working with so I will be anxious to see how they work in the quilt top.
Stay tuned! Part 3 will be posted in a few weeks and you can see what this quilt actually looks like!