Putting together the blocks! So far I have sewn 5 strips of triangles together, but not the strips to each other yet. I need to line them all up together first and then fill in the gaps at the end that will be trimmed down. Seams are ironed upwards for one strip and then down for the next one etc to reduce the bulk where they then join together. At the moment it is taking about 1 hour to sew 16 triangles into one strip. 10 to do. The picture below shows the first 2. I am excited watching this come together.

Some other pictures of construction, and laying out the triangles.

In between doing these I have also been researching finishing off the actual quilt. Bearing in mind I have never done quilting…..

I went to Ella at Sew Simple for a freehand quilting lesson which was really good fun. Although the course itself was freehand quilting, which I think overlaps a little with freemotion embroidery, I got to ask lots of questions about how to finish off the quilt, laying out the backing and the batting and pinning together and marking out where to quilt. So I have a much better idea now! I also know to get batting that allows a reasonable gap between quilting stitching.

Construction of a block. This is an ‘A’ block for my pattern. It will point to the right, with the light colour at the bottom. I start with a pile of the 3 fabric trapeziums (in light, medium and dark), and triangles.

First align the triangle, right sides together to the right of the ‘light’ trapezium. The point will stick out 1/4″. Sew 1/4″ seam from about 1/3 from the middle – i.e. NOT the full edge of the triangle.

Finger press the seam open. Align the ‘dark’ trapezium to the edge:

Finger press this seam open, then align the ‘medium’ trapezium to the edge:

The trickiest bit, then, is to sew the medium fabric to the original light one, and complete the seam along the triangle. As usual I forgot to take a photo of that part.

Iron all the seams open (photos here not ironed yet):

Once I knew this worked, I then finished cutting all the trapeziums:

Next step was to make one of each of the 16 triangles. Just to check I had all the fabrics planned in the right order to get the right effect. You really have to look at it from a distance to get the effect. But I was happy with this 🙂

I then make the rest of the triangles pile by pile, production line style…

Ending with a pile of 8 different ‘A’ blocks, and 8 ‘B’ blocks. 10 or 11 of each. I didn’t time how long the cutting took, but it has taken roughly an hour to construct each set of 10-11 blocks. So about 16 hours just on putting these together.

Things I learnt so far and not to forget…. It really matters which way you cut the fat quarter up…. I cut a couple one way, getting 8 x 2.5″ strips instead of 7, thinking I was clever. However, I then only got 2 trapeziums out of each strip instead of 3, so ended up with 16 trapeziums rather than 21. I had to go buy some more fat quarters in those fabrics. Measure and calculate before cutting!!!

Next stage is still in progress. Sewing the triangles into strips – Part 3.

This is a major project!! I have been meaning to make a patchwork quilt since we bought our bed 4 years ago. In the showroom the beds had lovely patchwork quilts on them. I did attempt some patchwork then, but have never had the inspiration or time or patience or inclination to do a full quilt. I have only done cushion covers, and even then I am rubbish at finishing them off!!! I like doing the patchwork, the fiddly bit, but not the cushion making!!

The inspiration for this came from a quilt my husband had seen that had a 3D effect. While looking for the pattern to do that, I found another that I liked. I bought both patterns off Etsy from USA and Canada!

Somehow, then I found a further one. I don’t really do Pinterest very much anymore, as you can lose so much time looking at pretty things, for links to take you nowhere useful!! It really is just for ideas and I used to find it very frustrating!! Anyway, I did stumble across someone’s quilt and decided that was what I needed to do!

So this is where my inspiration has come from:

Labyrinth Walk by The Guilty Quilter – what I was looking for

Entangled Sky by Krista Moser – what I found and was going to do

Then what I found:

Doodlebugs and Rosebud quilts

Taking the picture from Doodlebugs and Rosebud (who bought a kit I think), I worked out I needed 24 different fabrics, to make 16 different triangles – 8 ‘left facing’ (clockwise – my ‘B’ blocks) and 8 ‘right facing’ (anti-clockwise – my ‘A’ blocks). Using the Entangled Sky pattern showed me how to construct each block, and cut the fabric. I would need approximately 11 of each block (I think) depending on the arrangement of them and the ‘fill in’ triangles on the ends, which will be cut in half. So I would need a fat quarter of each fabric… hopefully.

Initial 12 fabric choices were bought from Sew Simple at Lady Heyes Craft Centre. I really didn’t know what I wanted. Ella asked me what colours I like, and we started from there. As I was a bit overwhelmed I did stop at 12 – 4 each dark, medium and light fabrics to get the 3D effect.

I then bought some more from Minerva Crafts, and some from my fabric stash…

Then the cutting began (21 Jan 2020)! Knowing I would be doing lots of cutting I ordered some new cutting wheels. That was a faff! Amazon Prime can be ace, but can be very frustrating!!! I was overjoyed at being able to order them for same day delivery 🙂 To then be furious when the Amazon App told me they had tried to deliver but hadn’t been able to. I had been in the house ALL the time, listening for the door. I get really cross when delivery people can’t find the doorbell!!! They deliver every day, surely they know people are more likely to hear a doorbell than a little tap on the door!! They were delivered the next day and just dropped through the letterbox, so I suspect they just ran out of time or couldn’t be bothered late on the previous Saturday night, not that they tried and I didn’t answer.

Start off by cutting fabric into 2.5″ strips…

Then using the 60 degree triangle, cut the trapeziums. These are measured by the height the full triangle would be I think, lining up the bottom of the strip with the 6.5″ line, and the top with the 4″ line:

I then numbered each fabric 1-8 for the lights, 9-16 for the mediums, and 17-24 for the darks, fairly randomly. I had done the same with the picture of the Doodlebugs quilt to work out the numbers in each of the 24 triangles. This was written down, along with how they will all line up…. vaguely… haha. The pattern also requires small plain triangles in the middle. I have plain black fabric for these. Also cut into 2.5″ strips, with lots of 2.5″ triangles cut out. I did a test one to check I had understood the pattern, before I cut them ALL out!

Here is a test A1 and B1 triangle sewn together.

In the next part I will show construction of one of the blocks, and the first impression of the 3D effect when I had made one of each of the blocks!