Y Seam Tutorial, another teaser & I'm going to be a judge!

The promised Y seam tutorial is now available. It is titled Y Seams My Way and Setting Triangles. I hope you will find it helpful. In addition to Y seams there are instructions for the triangles that turn the hexagons into diamonds. Once you do that it is just a matter of sewing them into rows and sewing the rows into a quilt! I used the techniques in the tutorial to make this quilt. The diamonds were cut from 2 ½” strips of fabric. The setting triangles (the rust fabric) were cut from 2 ¾” strips of fabric.

This was a fun quilt to piece and to quilt. It was one of the first quilts I machine quilted. I wasn’t sure what to do so I designed a large leaf to fill the hexagon. I worked with a golden variegated Gutermann 50 wt thread and was pleased with the overall effect.

Tumbling blocks are a great way to use strips or scraps quilt; I think that it would be fun to get together a group of friends for a swap. Simply decide on the size of the diamonds and that will determine the width of the strips. Each person would cut sets of three strips, and each set would consist of one light, one medium and one dark. Diamonds would be cut from the strip sets. These sets could be swapped with the other members of the swap. You might want to set some ground rules based on what you do or do not want. It would be great fun to see what everyone comes up with. The setting triangle fabric that is selected unifies the scrappiness of the quilt and just pulls everything together. I used just over a yard of fabric for the setting triangles in my quilt.

Yesterday I told you about my challenge quilt “Flora and Fauna, Parts of the Garden” and I posted a close-up as a little teaser! Today I am posting more teasers.

 

The butterfly at the top was made with one of the challenge fabrics, pink and purple asters on a white ground. I used the yellow orange centres of the flowers for the upper wings. Can you find the grasshopper in this one? I made him from one of my six fabrics I was allowed to add to the challenge fabrics!

I again used the same fabric to make the petals of the large three petal flower at the top. The blue background is made of a challenge fabric and one of the fabrics I added. The darkest turquoise is a Northcott fabric that featured gold stamped dragonflies (upper right hand corner). The next ring of fabric is the same fabric with the wrong side up! The third blue is the fabric I added. The bee's body is made from the centre of an aster. The mushrooms are made of my border fabric which is one of th six fabrics I added. All of the other leaves, flowers and flower centre are cut from another of my six fabrics.

3 ½” x 4 ½”

This is a close-up of an orange Japanese beetle that I embroidered. They have invaded southern Ontario and are eating the lilies. In addition to waging a war with snails, my Mom is also battling these little orange beetles!

 

I have samples of the six fabrics attached to the back of my quilt but I don’t have any of the three challenge fabrics. I’ve put out the call to my fellow Guild members to see if they have any in their stash. I’ve also written to Northcott but they no longer have archived images of these fabrics. If I can get some scraps or find pictures I will post them so you can see what I started with and where I ended up! I think you’ll be very surprised! Stay tuned for more teasers tomorrow!

 

And lastly a big thanks to all of you who voted for my quilt "There's a Snaiil in Grandma's Flower Garden" on Quilting Gallery. The winnder was Astrid Pongrac's "Thinking of Liz". I had so much fun making my quilt and for me that is always the most important aspect of quilt making! And I've been invited to be a guest judge for the Quilting Gallery Show and Tell this week. The theme is rectangles and squares. Do you have a quilt project made out of just rectangles and squares? If you do I encourage you to enter, even if it is a work in progress! For complete information read the guidelines and submit your photo before Friday, April 19th, 2013 at 8 a.m. (EDT). The voting starts on April 19 and closes on Monday at 6:00 pm.

Time to pin a quilt for quilting! Until I post again, happy sewing!