Progress on Brothers and Sisters

There is a finish in my sights on this project!  I managed to cut 6 of the pink pieces wrong, then had to re-cut them, but I persevered and now the top and bottom orders are pieced!

Now I just need to piece the cornerstones and I can sew these babies onto the quilt - then just one more solid border and the top is ready to go.

Also I gave a customer at the quilt shop a great tip today.  She was trying to arrange some fabrics in order from light to dark.

I showed her how to use her cell phone camera to take a black and white shot of the fabrics to see if anything looks out of order.  She loved my tip and is ready to go cut and sew her strips now.

Have you learned any great new tips lately?

Island Batik Planes, Trains and Automobiles hop continues

Today the blog hop features two quilts in the Georgia Peach line.  So pretty!  Visit these blogs and make sure to leave a blog post to win a great fabric prize at each one:

One Quilting Circle
KISSed Quilts

Here's a little sneak preview of my project for Friday's hop:

Tuesday Tip:

For today's tip I wanted to show you how I dealt with cutting out the large templates for the circular table runner I am working on.  The first thing I had to do was enlarge the pattern by 200%.  That's a whole other tip for another day - it was quite a process for me but I got it all right in the end.  

Then I taped together my pieces and had my full size template ready to go

This is the pieced section that I will be using to cut out my finished piece and the template.

After aligning the template bottom with the square and making sure my template is lined up straight, I place my ruler on top of the paper template and fabric, lining up the 1/4 inch line with the sewing line on the template.  This way, even if I have accidentally cut off part of the seam allowance my fabric will still have the full 1/4 inch seam allowance.  Cut off excess fabric with your rotary cutter.

Without moving your fabric or template, move ruler to opposite seam allowance and line up the sewing line at the 1/4 inch mark on the ruler.  I then move to the side of the cutting table and cut off the excess fabric.  The small curve at the top I cut without the ruler, just carefully use the cutter to trim.

While I am at it, here is how I trimmed the top of the square at the bottom to get a nice point at the seam:

Using a ruler with a 45 degree line, I lined up one of the seams with that mark and made sure the point was exactly at the 1/4 inch mark of the ruler.  Trim off excess and when you sew your 1/4 inch seam your point will meet the seam perfectly!

Hope these tips are helpful to you!  I am always looking for a faster, more accurate way to do things, and enjoy sharing what I have learned with you.

Help in Measuring Sixteenth of an Inch for Quilt Pieces

When you start dealing with small quilt pieces, or making block with 1/4 square triangles you find eventually that you need to go beyond the small eight of an inch measurement and start getting into the sixteenth of an inch measurements.  Often I will try to avoid these by cutting a bit larger and trimming down to the needed size after sewing, but sometimes it really is easier to cut by the smaller measurement.

Today I made a block with one of these, so I though I would share how I deal with cutting at this size.

This block is in honor of the Kentucky Derby and I call it May Roses.  For some of the units in this block you need to cut two squares, one red and one green that measure 5 and 3/16 inches square to cut into four triangle units.

The first thing to realize is that 3/16 of an inch is just slightly smaller than 1/4 of an inch.  My first cut is to remove a square of my fabric from the main piece that is just a bit larger than this:

  I then rotate the square around so the two cut sizes are under the ruler.  The small hash marks on my ruler are 1/8 of an inch apart, so the 3/16 I need to cut is between the 1/8 (2/16) and the 1/4 (4/16 mark).

I make sure that both sides of my square are lined up between the two marks and trim my square to the correct size.  Now it is ready to cut diagonally both directions to give me 4 triangles.  The benefit to cutting this way is that it keeps the bias edges all on the inside of the square so that you have the grain of the fabric on the outside edges, keeping everything nice and square and stable!

 These triangles are sewn together on the short sides to make a triangle:

 The next step is to make sure your pieced triangles are exactly the same size as your large triangle:

 If it is not, you need to check your seam allowance and adjust if necessary.  Now sew the large triange to the pieced triangle along the long side:

 (I didn't notice before I took this picture, but I ran out of bobbin thread before I got to the end of the seam!  Whoops!)  Press the seam toward the larger side.

 Check to make sure your square measures 4 1/2 inches.

 Trim your dog ears (those triangles hanging off the edges!)  Voila!

I hope this helps you deal with those super tiny increments of measuring!  Just remember to count 2 sixteenths for every 1/8 mark and you can do it!  Who knew that fractions could be so useful?  Boy, am I glad I got A's in math when I was in school!

Here is the finished block: