Making many diagonal striped squares, the quick & easy way, for the Houndstooth quilt

Take a look at my diagonal squares: 

Nice, neat, FLAT (since today’s task is to iron the little devils).  I got a good start on all the squares that had blue in them, since that was the smallest color (just around the edges).  THere are a LOT of white & yellow & greys left to do.  WHEEE! 

Once you’ve got a whole pile of these, you can use the to do MANY things.  Alternate the direction of the diagonal, and you end up with little squares everywhere on the diagonal.  Alternate a bunch of 2 square diagonals with a solid, and you’ve got a traditional houndstooth pattern.  Line up a bunch of squares and you’ll have a solid diagonal striped pattern, with undulating or gradiating colors, if you choose. 

MY intent is to use them in a herringbone, which is one of the more complex ways of arranging them, and it requires mimicking the threads of a herringbone weaving loom, weft and warp going across & down… the thing that makes a herringbone when weaving is the alternating peeks of each thread as it crosses and then goes under a thead of a different color going down through the pattern.  My intent is to alter the traditional pattern by a bit, to include some stripes of different colors, ultimately getting a herringbone/plaid quilt, representing my stepdaughter’s alma mater colors.  Hopefully it will work. 

I’ve counted up all the little stripes that will come from the top and all the stripes that will come from the sides, and how many blocks of each stripe color combination I will need to complete this task, and I’ve cut them.  Here’s how. 

I took WOF (width of fabric… usually 45”) strips of 2 inches.  Anyone wanting to make diagonal stripes with jelly rolls (a more traditional, 2 & ½ inch strip), could easily do it, the little squares will be bigger and easier to deal with in terms of numbers, but of course, I wanted a lot of variation in my herringbone plaid pattern, so I went with a smaller size.  I could have gone down to 1 & ½, but the resulting squares would be so tiny, that doing a whole twin sized quilt out of them would have been extremely tedious as a first use of the pattern. 

What you need at a very basic level are two strips of two different fabrics.  Make them fairly obviously different… a large pink floral on a small green background, paired with a stripe of a large pink flamingo on a green background, will just look like a mishmash… for this pattern, you lose the identity of the larger prints.  It’s the perfect pattern to use with a solid or batik or small print, particularly tone on tone.  This is one where you want the two colors used in each block to be a clear contrast. 

Sew the two stripes together.  Width of fabric.  Press to the darker side.  Do it again. Then take the two lovely, flat pieces of stripes and put them right sides together, alternating colors facing each other (If you have the same color on the side, flip one of them to start with the other end).  Sew up one side, then turn and sew up the other side.  You will have a long tube with the right sides in, nice & flat.  The second side is SO easy to sew up, because the fabric is being held steady by the side you already sewed, and as long as you flattened them out, you’re good.  Just hold them against the quarter inch seam guide and it goes together easily.

PUT THIS ON THE CUTTING BOARD AS IS.  You don’t need to turn it inside out, press, or anything.  You’ll need any ruler that has a 45 degree angle on it.  I use a small square ruler that shows 45 and 60 degree angles also. 

For the first cut, put the edge of your 45 degree line along one of the seams up the side of your tube.  Please note that in this photo, I put the 45 degree line along the bottom of the fabric edge so you can see the line easier, but for the cutting, I slid it up to where the line was on top of the seam (harder to see on the photo, but when the line of stitching is kind of covered by the line on the ruler and you CAN"T see them separately any more, you've got it properly aligned on that edge). 

Position it so the END of the cut will be at the end of the tube.  Your first point will be just at the seam of the other side.  Slice the whole way through the tube.  The little end is a scrap.  If you have not sliced off your selvage ends of fabric before slicing the strips, then position your ruler so that the selvage is part of the scrap end.  There is so little waste in this method of creating diagonally striped squares, that the extra inch of selvage is not worth trying to squeeze into your square (and it would only make one of the edges more bulky with an even stiffer fabric in that line, a big issue since the seams of these squares will all meet in these little corners and create excess bulk if you don’t keep them carefully trimmed & small. 

Your second cut will start where the first cut began, at the point.  But this point is NOT at the edge of the fabric.  It’s JUST inside the seam.  A cut that made the point go to the edge of the fabric would make a larter square, but it would also require undoing the stitches in that seam allowance at the other end.  This is supposed to be EASY, so cutting it larger and then having to rip out several stitches in each square makes no sense.  If you need the larger squares, just make the strips larger by a half inch and cut to THAT line of stitching.  When you position your ruler to make the point just inside the seam and the 45 degree line across the bottom of the other seam, you've got it right.  Just make sure that as you adjust the point, you don't come off the bottom line, and as you readjust the bottom line, you keep the point just inside the seam.  It takes a little sliding around at first, but it pretty quickly becomes an easy task.

In order to get it apart from the other squares, you’ll cut THROUGH the stitching at the other end, and just follow through. 

Don’t worry that you’re cutting into an important seam line for the next square over.  In fact, cutting back that little diagonal piece within the seam only helps prevent you from having excess flaps of fabric at all the joined corners of the squares when you’re finished.

Continue this way up the whole strip, positioning so the tip of each cut is at the seam of one edge, and the cut makes a new 45 degree angle with the seam on the other edge.   

Before you know it, you’ve got a whole stack of triangles to flatten into squares.  For each triangle, pick it up by the light-colored tip.

  Lay the other side on the ironing board.  Put the iron flat onto the other side.  Hold the iron there as you tug the tip in your fingers away from the other side.  For this photo, usually I'd have my iron where my middle finger is.  I needed a hand to hold the camera (not yet completely high-tech with the presentation).  The point is to open it by putting the iron onto the larger light stripe and tugging the light colored end with your other hand, while pushing the iron into it so that the seam flattens under the larger dark stripe. 

Push the iron onto the seam down the center of the square, and push out. 

This should flatten the seam under the dark strip of that side of the square.  Make sure the seam on the other side of that strip also goes towards the dark stripe, and flatten the whole square.  Store the squares flat & ready to use in your pattern.  If you choose, snip off the little flapping ears at the corner of the square (it's seen coming out under the iron in the photo above).  This little excess seam allowance is unnecessary and will again create bulk at exactly the point in your finished piece where bulk is not needed. 

Quilts for Pulse: auditioning the layouts of hearts for the quilt top

We have 4 options so far:  Straight rows of color

I find it boring, but in a straight quilt of 6 x 8 in a rainbow, there’s not a lot of room to bend the rainbow

Diagonal rows:

I kind of like the diagonal, but do we lose the rainbow at this point?

Chevron:

If the diagonal lost the color theme, then the chevron just takes it a step farther down the lost path.  I like the idea of a kind of arrow or "arch"... but when put on the table, it doesn't make the cut.

 

Radiating:  Red in center and outside corners, other colors radiating in & out from them…

Just a hot mess, and NOT just because some of my block got twisted as I walked around the table & put them all together!

SO I’m sick of putting all 48 of these blocks on the table, walking around & re-arranging… but someone had a cool idea… how about if I turn the blocks upside down for every other row, or for each half of the quilt?  HMMM… I might have to put some rows together right side up & upside down, and then see how to combine them.  I like the idea.  It JUST might work… at least better than the straight rows. 

Thinking... thinking... thinking... needs more thought.  I'll give y'all the verdict later... but for now... notice, this kind of playing around with the layout requires a few things... first, the camera so that you can remember & put them next to each other, it takes WAY too long to arrange & re-arrange so you can see them back & forth.  Second, a big area to use to play with them... ALSO, you've got them all pressed so you're not dealing with lumpy seams on top of all the unfinished edges and the fact that the stupid blocks will twist & turn on the table since they're not completely together yet. 

AND an imagination.... preferably one that can think in patterns, so that you can envision the chevron and set the blocks in place to make it work.  ANYONE can think in a stripe, but if you can figure out how to move the stripe over by one block, for every new row... you've got a good start. 

Quilts for Pulse: Auditioning the selvage heart and cutting triangles off the heart halves

For my Orlando Pulse quilt, the intention is to have a heart for each of the 49 victims of the tragedy.  The front of the quilt will be 6 columns of 8 blocks each, which adds up to 48 (and magically, it takes 6 colors to make a rainbow, another major element needed in this quilt, so there are 8 blocks of each of the 6 colors).  But I need another block.  And  don’t want to favor any one color over any other.  I’ve been interested in selvage quilting for a while, and this seems a good opportunity to do it. 

 Photo of plain colored heart next to selvage heart:

I considered the possibility of positioning the selvages in a way so that it would appear they were curving around the edges of the heart, but to start with, the hearts called for by the initial Orlando Modern Quilt Guild request were squared off, no curving pieces required.  But on top of that, because there are 6 colors of selvages (and 6 colors in the rainbow), to try to turn it into a curved piece where one color was at the center and the others radiated out from it, would necessarily mean much less of the color in the center and more of the color around the perimeter.  I decided to do it as if I were simply replacing one of my rainbow single-color fabrics, and using the selvages to create a pieced stripe fabric.

I cut two 5 & ½ inch x 10 & ½ inch strips of one of my white-on-white fabrics to use as a base, and lined my 6 selvages up in order of rainbow color.  Because they are selvages, there is a large portion of each selvage strip that’s taken up with brand name, color dots, and other information that identifies the type of fabric, the designer, the store it came from, and the colors used.  One would think this would be good information to use to match and find the same fabric in the future if I ever need it again, but my favorite fabric store owner, whose “colors in quilting” class I took last week, assures me that these days the designs of the fabrics are changing so rapidly that it would be near impossible to find additional sources of a fabric just by keeping the selvages.  Still... I’m sure the manufacturers have a reason for putting all this information on the selvages, probably something involving identifying it in their own inventory, and customers who use fabric have spent centuries slicing off the selvages before sewing (because either the thicker weave of the selvage or the interruption of the pattern and color would ruin our projects). 

Quilters have a tradition of trying to be frugal about fabrics, so it makes sense that modern quilters would look at the selvages as we tossed them in the wastebasket and wonder if they couldn’t find a way to make use of them in a modern pattern… Selvage projects are becoming en vogue, so of course I had to try it. 

But the odd coloring of the edge of the selvage means that my rainbow will be oddly mottled… Still, rather than abandon the idea, I carry on.  I take 22 inch strips of selvage from each color, and sew them onto my base fabric, one at a time, approximately a quarter inch from the cut edge.  The un-cut edge will not fray, so I need now sew it just yet.  I intend for it to show and I don’t need a line of stitching showing down every strip of the stripe… so for now, I’m just sewing each piece down by it’s cut edge, lapping the selvage edge over far enough that IF I choose to tack it down later, it will cover the stitching from the previously placed selvage.  I finish attaching each of the 6 selvages (in rainbow order… ROYGBV) to the base fabric, and slice the two bases apart, cutting through the 22 inches of selvage at the halfway point.  This makes strips that are a half inch bigger than necessary, but that’s not really a problem.  THIS heart does not need to fit in a row or column of similarly sized hearts.  It is EASIER to complete the task if I cut if back by another half inch to make my selvage pieced “fabric” just the same 10 & ½ inches that all the other heart halves are… but it’s not a problem if I choose not to do it that way. 

Before I go further, I have to decide, which part of the heart will be the middle?  I audition the blocks by putting them together each possible way, just laying the white background down on top in a way that approximates the final heart, and I take a photo with my cellphone.  Then I switch the blocks around and re-position the background pieces, and take another photo.  Looking at a photo often clarifies an issue.  You no longer see the waves and threads and strips wehre it’s not quite sewn perfectly, you see it closer to the way it will look when it’s finished.  Before access to easy photos, quilters would put their fabric on a wall and step back, or maybe squint at the different options, to see which they liked better.  With cameras in all of our cellphones these days, it’s easier… we can snap photos and put the photos next to each other to make the choice. 

PHOTOS of selvage heart auditions:

Look at my options.  In one photo, I’ve put the Violet part of the rainbow in the center, in the other, I’ve put the red part in the center.  My informal survey of the people sewing around me at my Friday afternoon quilting gathering, was a tie vote.  And I could not decide which I liked better.  But I ended up choosing to put the red in the center, as this is the color of the blood spilled from the hearts of the 49 people who died in Orlando at Pulse. 

Slicing off the triangles:

My intention has always been to piece the back of this quilt.  We’ll see what I come up with.

My choices are starting to expand as I move forward in creating these hearts.  You see as I finished putting together each heart half, I piled them up, choosing to do all the cutting & sewing at once, and then trim the excess threads (so they don’t show through the white side of the fabric on top of the batting once it’s quilted), trimming off the excess part of the squares (since the heart form only needs the triangle to remain and leaving all that excess fabric inside the quilt is unnecessary and would make it lumpy), and press the hearts so that I can take the next step of sewing the halves together, all at the same time.  Pressing is a job I don’t enjoy, but the results are so wonderful that I don’t skimp on it. 

Photo of ruler ready to slice off some triangles:

Still, I don’t enjoy it, so I delay it as long as possible.  I spent a few HOURS trimming off triangles.  This seems a good moment to show how easy it is to line a good ruler up with the stitches and trim off the excess on a project like this.  My ruler has little quarter inch lines at each edge, and you just put that line on the seam, with the open edge hanging in the direction of the stuff you’re cutting off, then run the rotary cutter up the edge.  Easy peasy… If you’ve done a better job than I have, and managed to attach the little squares with perfect diagonal seams, you can even accomplish the slicing of all 3 little triangles off of every heart half, without spending much time on the repositioning of the ruler.  But if you’re like me, and your seams aren’t all perfectly straight, just match up the top & bottom of each seam, and make sure the middle doesn’t bow out for you to slice through (you need the stitching to actually still be there once you’re finished taking off the triangles) and then slice. 

We end up with a BUNCH of little triangles.  Some that are about 5 -5 & ¼ inches on the legs (right angle isosceles triangles, if you remember your high school geometry, we’ve basically cut a 5 & ½ square diagonally down the middle, leaving ¼ inch for the seam).  Others are about 1 & 1/4 inches to the legs, also isosceles, also right angles. 

It occurs to me that I might have little triangles of colors to pop into the backing of this quilt.  It could be a wonderfully symbolic idea… the pieces from the hearts on the front of the quilt, shattering and creating entirely new designs on the back.  Hopefully beautiful designs.  We’ll see.  It’s an idea.  The smaller triangles even seem a little too small to use, but sometimes a very small pop of color inserted into an otherwise white or beige background can be more powerful than large splashes of color, more pleasing to the eye… and I can’t resist the opportunity to use the little pieces of the hearts from the front of the quilt. 

mid century modern quilt

OK… so for a while I’ve been obsessed with the mid-century modern designs like my parents had when I was growing up.  I know now that we had some furnishings that would be considered Scandinavian (with a last name like “Lindquist”, how could we not?).  OH how I wish I could have back some of the stuff they got rid of when they retired & moved to Florida in the 1990s! 

ANYWAYS, I am more drawn to the sleek, contemporary, “atomic” designs than to the kitschy plastic… I have this ambition to create a starburst wallhanging out of wood shims (great opportunity to personalize on issues of color, as opposed to getting the same thing from a store).  And I’ve been doodling various mid-century artist motifs for a while, trying to come up with some fun quilt patterns… one I finally followed through on was a “chain” type form. 

Anyone who grew up in that era will remember the bead chain “curtains” that sometimes were put across doorways… you could block the vision from room to room while having a super-cool, hip, hippy-dippy decoration.  They even clicked when you pulled them aside to enter the room.  Lots of motifs similar to a bead chain were drafted, some more organic than others, some looking like a chain of amoebas and others looking like some type of interlocking machinery. 

I drew an inspiration drawing, and from that, decided I needed to find a way to do it without curves (at least the first time around).  I was trying to find a way to create this quilt with a bunch of strips and not have to cut exacting small pieces… Strip em together & then slice, strip & slice… seems like less little pieces of things flying around my sewing room all the time.  Always a good plan. 

So I doodle up an idea, then put together a more detailed way to look at it, blocking off several different sections until I can eyeball a single block that can be repeated.  I get to the point where I realize that to make the “chain” portion of it, I need to add “sashing” to the side of each block, then alternate the way I put the blocks together so that the sash turns into a chain separating two blocks from an alternate color. 

For my “chain”, I choose two colors, a light grey and a dark grey.  And for the “beads”?  It took a while, but I finally discovered that a layer cake would be the perfect variety of fabric to fish from.  This was before my selvage obsession, so I was not opposed to purchasing a pre-cut group of fabric just yet.  For the uninitiated, a “layer cake” is a group of fabrics pre-cut into 10 x 10 inch squares.  Usually from the same manufacturer and the same designer’s line of fabric for that season, a layer cake can often help you find a variety of fabrics that have already been curated to match each other in terms of tone, value, hue… You can almost always be sure that if you choose anything from that one layer cake, that you will be able to match it with anything else from the same layer. 

I chose a number of my favorites from this particular layer.  They were single color fabrics, at the most extreme, “tone on tone”, so that the beads of this design would pop from the grey chains by virtue of their color rather than their print… I sliced each of my favorites in half, divided them into two piles.  Each half of a 10 by 10 inch slice went into a different pile.  I wanted an even number of light greys and dark greys… I wanted each color to be evenly dispersed between light greys and dark… if it looked funny, I could always switch off, get a whole new set of colors (maybe pinks rather than blues), and do them up separately to see if it worked better to have the colors be wildly different in each chain.  If I ended up with extra blocks, who cares?  I can make them into pillows or placemats or table runners or a whole different quilt with a whole different look for having a different color combination. 

Then I sliced up a bunch of the greys in width of fabric (WOF) strips of 2 & ½ inches. 

I took all the 5 x 10 inch colored pieces from ONE pile, and sewed it to the side of one of the dark greys.  From the OTHER pile, every one of the colored pieces got sewed to the side of the light greys.  Yes, it would take several strips to get every one of them done, but after they were done, I sliced them apart, then I went down the other side of each strip with the same color.  Then I took the length of the layers and took another strip and went down them, then on the other side.  By the time I was finished, I had a number of blocks of 5 x 10 inch colors, surrounded by a 2 & ½ inch dark grey, and another number of blocks surrounded by the LIGHT grey.  Next step… on every one of the dark greys, sew a strip of light grey to one side.  On every light grey, sew a strip of dark grey to one side. 

CLEARLY, I need to do another of these tops, this time taking more photos of the intermediate process.  It's so much fun to work without slicing up teeny tiny little squares, rectangles and triangles of fabric before starting to do the work, ... it's great to zoom along and get stuff done and then slice it up bit by bit as you create, but I'm having a hard time stopping to show it.  So I'll make an effort... I"ll do another one of these.  But I like the general way it worked.  take a peek & see for yourself!

Now you didn't see that coming, did you?  SUPER cool mid-century-looking chain, from me talking about sewing strips of light & dark grey onto 5 x 10 inch blocks of color?  To finish this one up, I'm going to put more of the dark grey on one side to kind of offset it, and then I'll be using this as a sample top for a longarm class I'm taking later this month.  I want to have several tops finished so that I can rent the longarm machine for many hours & practice, practice, practice... so for now, this is where it stands.  Sitting in my project box, ready to be finished after I take a class in how to use the longarm machine.  HOW MUCH FUN is this?