Design Wall Tuesday 10.08.13

This is my 501st post! I didn’t even realize I’d hit a milestone last time.

The top is done! Hip hip hooray!

It has a number of problems but is surprisingly pretty square. So I don’t think I’m going to trim much off the outside edges.

The side setting triangles don’t match.

The top setting triangles are all consistent. But I don’t know if they’re right. They look nice, though.

This bottom setting triangle had to be eased in and it isn’t pretty. I’m surprised there was only one that didn’t fit right.

The bottom triangles are a mess, too.

It’s a good thing this was a test and not a commission. Ha!

What did I learn from this? Find someone who’s done it before and done it well. (Preferably with a book or published pattern.)

A points trimmer would have been handy. I have one, but I didn’t think to use it. I think it would have helped fit a lot of those points together and taken the guesswork out of it. Would it have taken all the guesswork out? I wouldn’t think so, but wouldn’t it be ironic if that’s the only thing that would have taken this quilt from near-disaster to perfection?

I’m willing to try again. When I made this one, I used the cutting measurements straight out of Electric Quilt the way I designed it, not knowing there was more to it (and no, it’s not in the user guide). By specifying that the diamonds measure 6″ finished, the actual cutting was done with weird-sized strips and the markings on the Fons and Porter diamond-cutting template/ruler I used (sorry, don’t remember the name of it) didn’t help. I had to use blue masking tape to mark the spot to line up with the cut edge of the fabric. Next time, I’m going to size the quilt based on the size of the strips I want to cut (a whole number on the ruler) which means doing some math and inputting a fake dimension to make EQ calculate it the way I want it. At least, that’s my theory.

That’s what’s going on in Short Pump, go to Judy L’s page to see what everyone else is working on.

Read Full Post »

Design Wall Monday 09.30.13

I’m in the home stretch! There are only two more seams to sew!

The next challenge, which ended up not being very challenging, was sewing the rows together so that the sashings line up.

Since the sashing are 1″ wide and I just happen to have a 1″ ruler, it seemed easy enough to just line up the sashing this way and make tiny pencil marks on the connecting sashing. And yes, that was easy. But I found that I could eyeball it just as well.

But the last rows I joined this morning have a big problem:

I don’t know what I did wrong with the upper left cornerstone block. I can see that I will need to re-do the short sashing strip because I obviously cut the angle wrong. But even if I’d cut the angle correctly, it looks to me like the setting triangle is too short no matter what. The upper right cornerstone block looks pretty danged perfect.

Yikes! I’m not sure how I’m going to fix this, if it’s even fixable at this point.

And I was feeling so good about this project.

That’s all the excitement from Short Pump, check out all the action at Judy L’s blog.

Read Full Post »

Onward and upward!

Ok, it’s time to trim the rows so that I can add the sashing strips. I’m feeling more confident now, let’s hope my optimism is warranted.

This is the upper right corner unit. I discovered after measuring that if I trimmed off the 1/2″ overage, the top of the triangle measures 6.25″ which is exactly what it should be.

This is the next row to the left. If I put my ruler at the 1/4″ mark, it lines up with the raw edge of the attached diamond. Sweet!

This is a short row from the left side. I don’t know what measurement the block should be, so I held my breath and trimmed it even with the diamond’s raw edge. I hope that was right. 🙂

Well it looks good, anyway!

So I got one long sashing strip sewn onto a row before I left for work this morning.

Stay tuned, this quilt might actually work!

Read Full Post »

Design Wall Monday 09.23.13

I’m still whining about how these units are to be sewn together, but I’m feeling a little more confident that I’m on the right track. The blocks in all the rows are attached to each other now. After showing that corner unit to a friend, she feels that it’s correct and that there will just be some trimming before I sew the long sashing strips to the rows. I did some measuring and compared that to my layout in EQ7 and it appears there will also be some trimming around the perimeter after the top is constructed.

Another discovery we made is that the designer of the original quilt made her setting triangles by cutting extra diamonds in half both lengthwise and crosswise. Margaret says that’s not the way to do it because it doesn’t allow for the seam allowances. Looking closely at the photos in the tutorial, we can see where her units came up short in the places where mine overhang. She must have just made up for it in the seam allowances, but I’d rather have mine too big and then cut it down.

Margaret and I talked about a new project or two, sewing baby quilts for our company’s United Way auction. I’ll share details later.

That’s what’s going on in Short Pump, check Judy L’s page for everyone else’s projects.

Read Full Post »

Aligning Setting Triangles to other units

Wow, I can’t believe I can’t find anything on the Internet (a la Google) that explains or has photos or videos of how to line up setting triangles to other units in a diagonal set quilt. When I search on how to sew setting triangles, most of what I get is how to cut them out. If you know of something, please let me know. These things aren’t intuitive and since I don’t know what they’re supposed to look like when they’re sewn, I can’t tell if I’m right or not.  And just looking at a finished quilt doesn’t help.

Here I’ve pinned a side triangle to its neighboring sashed diamond. I only concerned myself with the right side of the seam and that’s a 1/4″ of the sashing that you see peeking out. There’s a lot more than a 1/4″ hanging over on the left side.

That alignment produced this and I’m thinking that this is what it should look like.

So then I had to line up the top setting triangle to the other end of the diamond. Not sure what to do here, so I pinched a tiny crease in the centers of each and lined up to that.

Now my short little row looks like this. The 1/4 corner triangle will fill in the upper right and give it a 90degree outside edge. At least the top edge of the triangle looks “level” so I’m thinking this was the correct placement.

Now the corner triangle is basted in place. I sort-of have that outside 90degree corner LOL. But that seam intersection in the red circle is a 1/2″ from the raw edge. Shouldn’t it be 1/4″?

I hate it when I can’t figure this stuff out myself.

Read Full Post »

What do I do now?

I’m having a real hard time visualizing how the setting triangle at the top should be sewn to its neighboring diamond. Should I sew the other sashing strips to the diamonds first? But no, the setting triangle needs sashing strips, too. And I’m planning on cutting one long strip for each side of the diamonds. Should I just match the center of the triangle to the center of the diamond? Maybe I didn’t cut the angles right on the triangle’s sashing strip. I sent a picture to the pattern designer and she said I did it right. But in order to get that angle, I had to space the triangles 2″ apart on the sashing strip (I chain-pieced them). In her example, the triangles are much closer together. I’m still confused about that. She didn’t show any clear pictures of the setting triangles, she mostly focused on the diamonds.

And how does the other setting triangle get matched to its neighboring diamond? I *think* it should work the same way the diamonds went together: center them together, leaving a 1/4″ bunny ear on each side of the seam.

Help!

Read Full Post »