Quilting

I've been plugging away at my sewing lately. Perhaps inspired by the sewing class I'm teaching. Well, not entirely. I was sewing up until shortly before Christmas, and then put it aside while I finished up some knitting I was doing for gifts. Now I'm back on track. I finished up a dress that sat around for a few weeks, half done, then got around to some mending. The next thing on my list was to get started on Beenie's quilt. She's so excited. I took her to JoAnn's to pick out her fabric a couple of months ago - she was duly warned that sewing might not begin immediately, but they had their fat quarters on sale for $0.99 ea., so I couldn't pass it up. Next we picked out a pattern from Quilter's Cache ; free quilt block patterns, with wonderful instructions and pictures - gotta love that. She picked the Ranger's Pride block. A bit more involved than anything I've done before, but I was game, especially after I saw that instead of sewing a bunch of little triangles, you sew squares that are cut and opened to form triangles. Can you tell I've not been quilting seriously for very long?

Most of the fabric already cut up into squares and rectangles.

Pardon the poor picture quality - I was the photographer. I should stick to sewing.

Next, you draw diagonal lines on half the blocks - I chose the

lighter fabric to draw on for obvious reasons. Stack the

one with the line on top of the right side of a patterned square.

Then you line up your presser foot to make a scant 1/4"

seam down one side of the line...

turn the square around and repeat down the other

side of the line.

Cut down the line you drew...

and press open the square, pressing the seam to the

side of the patterned fabric.

Last thing, clip those little corner tails off. I don't know

what you really call them, but corner tails seemed an

apt description. Isn't this just the neatest way to make

a double triangle square?

At least I thought it was great 'til I got to thinking about how many of those little corner tails I was going to have to cut.          1008!! Nope, not a typo  -  1008.       It's a 12 inch block, so it will take 42 blocks to form the quilt. 4 of these large squares per block.  8 of the small squares/block. 2 corner tails/square. Equals 1008 tails.

Oh well - I still think it's pretty neat. I'm sure it's much better than trying to piece that many little triangles.

It's great when you start to see the pattern come together.

Yep - it's still great.

Three blocks almost done.

The first completed block.

The first four laid out to give you an overall idea of the pattern.

So that's what I've been up to - you know, along with all the other mundane stuff like grocery shopping, paying bills, cooking, and washing clothes - oh, and school. Much to the girls chagrin, I've not forgotten that.