Proof of Concept-Part 1

It's my birthday week, and to celebrate, I want to give you something. This is actually first of a two part idea.

I don't know about you, but I do a lot of google image searches for quilts. If someone asks me for a specific kind of quilt, I'm going to do a google image search to help me decide how I might want to tackle their request. Sometimes I come across new techniques, and sometimes a photo will spark a new idea in my mind. For example, I saw a photo of Migrating Geese, and when I looked at the technique, I came up with a way to do it that appealed to me more. You can find that post here. Notice that my version gives me bonus HST's. I never consider these waste, they are a bonus. This is important for the direction I'm going now.

I saw a random photo of a quilt online, and I didn't save the photo, I don't know where I found it. The quilt had a lot of movement in it, and I have no idea how close my quilt is to the original, because it was months between when I saw the photo, and when I tried to come up with a plan, that would result in two different quilts from one technique. I did not see a quilt like the second quilt you'll get.

Now when I'm experimenting, I don't want to use my best fabrics. Time to turn to my men's shirts stash. I also needed an accent fabric, and I just grabbed a cream solid, because I had a bolt of it.

This is more of a technique than a pattern, but I'll give you the sizes I used for my experiment. 

I cut a bunch of men's shirts into 6.5" squares. Why that size? Because I cut my novelty scraps into that size, and I thought that I might someday try this with novelty prints. The size of the square doesn't matter. In fact, I think I might do this again with 3.5" squares. For each block quarter, you need three squares, so 12 squares for one big block.

Now we need to frame the square.

Here's where that accent fabric came in, each square gets framed with the SAME accent fabric. What width your frame is can vary to your taste, since this was my first attempt, I just decided to cut two pieces 2 x 6.5", and two pieces 2 x 9.5" Since each of these is a quarter of a block, the big blocks finish at 18". 

Now we need to add some sew and flip corners, just two per square. I'm going to be honest here, for these you do NOT want to overcut and trim everything. Accuracy does matter, but it's not hard. I do a LOT of sew and flip corners, and I used to draw lines, and that will totally work here. If you want to draw diagonal lines to do your sew and flip corners, you need to draw two lines, one corner to the opposite diagonal corner, and one 1/2" away from that. These need to be accurate, because we won't be trimming.

I did not draw lines for these. I used this ruler.

I also have the Folded Corner Clipper Ruler which I love, but it was too small for 6 inch squares.  If you are unfamiliar with these type of rulers, here is one video of many that show you how to use them. In this particular video, she doesn't cut as accurately as you should for this project, because we will absolutely be making the bonus HST's. If the video doesn't make sense to you, the blog post I linked above above migrating geese a use the Folded Corner Clipper Ruler and gave step by step photos, and you use it the same way you use the Simple Folded Corners ruler.

One thing I prefer about using these rulers, is when piecing, I prefer to use a screw in seam guide on the bed of my machine. If I'm following a diagonal line, I can't use a screw in seam guide, because it would bunch up the fabric and make it inaccurate. Once you cut with this ruler, you are simply sewing a 1/4 inch seam on the main block, then grabbing the part you cut off, and sewing a 1/4" seam on that bonus HST too. 

When I said we are doing two sew and flip corners, this is what I meant -opposite diagonal corners. We want to sew opposite diagonal corners on each quarter block. Remember, we are only using one size of square here, so since my main square was cut 6.5", so are my corner squares. Each time I sewed the diagonal on the main sew and flip corner, I would immediately sew the diagonal on the bonus HST we cut off. You'll get less shifting if you just sew it all right away. 

I want you to put the bonus HST's aside, we'll deal with those next week. Right now we are making the main block. 

Four quarter blocks can be turned to make this big block. I want you to notice where the point that we are matching actually is. Where the sew and flip corners come together, are actually the inside point of the star that is created when we sew four block quarters together. If you do some aggressive trimming, the odds of trimming every block exactly the same are slim, and that point is not at the halfway point so to would be hard to trim exactly and have the points match up. So basically, unlike a lot of blocks that may need trimming, in this case if you trim you are MORE likely to lose your points. 

What happens if you start putting these big blocks together?

The stars come out! You end up with a quilt with a great diagonal lattice, a field of stars, and you didn't do any difficult sewing! I want to try this again with 3.5" squares, and either 1.5" or 1" wide framing strips. 1" wide would finish at 1/2", so they would be tiny stars! 

This is quilt #1, and next week we'll make quilt number two.