New Project Progress

Between 3:00am and 5:30am I finished the center of this quilt top for the Beginner Quiltmaking class sample. I'll add an inner border using the multi-colored fabric, and an outer border of olive, I believe.

The tricky part of this quilt was figuring out dimensions so that each row was the same width. It turned out well, I think. In this quilt we have beginner practice for triangle-squares, 4-patches, and star-making using the square-in-the-corner method (see below)...

You know...place the yellow square in the corner, right sides together, and draw a diagonal line on the yellow piece, which will then become your sewing line. Jackie Robinson gave this tip for chain sewing blocks this way. It works very well.

Here's the Mary Ellen Hopkins tip (I love her!) on trimming only the extra yellow away, but leaving the blue so that the "true" size of the block is obvious when you sew. Of course, the next step is to press that yellow triangle toward the corner. The finished product is the star points in the first photo. If you'd like a closeup photo of the points in the stars, just leave a comment on this blog and I'll post one.

After going back to bed at 5:30 (my mid-life curse: up in the middle of the night, every night), I got up at 7:30 and spray basted this quilt together for the "Scrappy Bricks Quilt" class I'll teach in February. I'll hand this quilt over to the quilt shop tomorrow, so today will be a machine quilting day.

FYI, this is Patsy Thompson's method of spray basting a quilt on a wall. It's so much easier than doing it on the floor or on a table. The video directions for doing this are on her Fast & Free Volume 1 DVD, which is a wonderful machine quilting instructional DVD. Here's my tip: don't try to do this with wool batting. Cotton is best. The wool batting is too fluffy and won't adhere well to the backing. I've tried it twice, and (after a few swear words) I went out and bought some cotton batting last night. With the cotton batting and the backing pinned to the wall, I had the whole thing spray basted in just a few minutes. ***Follow ALL safety directions on the adhesive can. I wear a good painting mask and goggles and have a fan next to me and the garage door open.