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Monday, June 25, 2012

Angular


I have been wanting to make a triangle quilt. Actually, I have been coveting the one on the wall on Fons and Porter Love of Quilting show but could not find the pattern for that quilt on their website. But the Internet is full of resources and resourceful people. I am starting to believe that really, there is nothing new, now we just have access to it all.

I found a website with what I wanted a couple of days ago, but now I can't find it. I even left a comment. Sheesh. So I can't give credit, but, like I said, there is nothing new, so I am sure there are many others giving instructions too.

This isn't meant to be, so it's not much of a tutorial, but I will show and tell what I did. 

First I had to look for my triangle ruler. I have a "Quilt in a Day" triangle that is 5 inches from the longest angle to the side opposite.

The other tools I needed were my sewing machine, cutting mat, straight ruler, rotary cutter, scissors, and *sigh* my seam ripper. 
I pulled out a variety of scraps. I'm not too much for a mish-mash of colors, so I went for monochrome and blue which seems to be my go-to. I found 7 blues and two beige. I cut 5" strips and started cutting triangles (sorry, I didn't take a pic of this part). 

Lay the triangle on the strip where the longest angle (which has no tip on the ruler) touches the top and the opposite edge touches the bottom. Cut off the end (scrap bag) and cut the other end. *Pull away your triangles and flip the ruler. Set it against the cut edge and cut.

Okay, so now with all those triangles, I cut off the points. I used my triangle ruler and just turned it to use as a guide and lopped off the points. 

I cut out 150 triangles and then laid them all out.

So, this is where I messed up. I laid out all the triangles and played with the layout and colors and decided that I would just throw caution to the wind and toss them all in a bowl and randomly pull them out and stitch. I did that and matched to edges and sewed...74 sets of them, I sewed. I cut them apart and that's when I realized I sewed them all wrong!



The correct way is to flip one triangle onto the one next to it. ONLY ONE SIDE will line up!!! There are bunny ears on the other side. 

So I un-sewed all those little seams and re-sewed them...
I figured I would have completed the quilt in the time it took me to take all those triangles apart... Live and learn...

Then they all looked like this...
For my lap quilt I ended up with 8 rows of 15 triangles. 
Yeah, I know...I had to un-sew the last one on each row. I didn't really think all this through...remember when I tossed them all in the bowl?

Here's the finished triangles. 

But I'm not finished yet! I need to square up and add borders, batting, backing and quilt it.

Right now it measures about 
31" x 36" minus the points I will cut in half on the sides when I square up.


I will probably add 4" of border before I finish. The finished quilt top should measure approximately 35" x 40".



1 comment:

  1. I think it is beautiful. I haven't sewn a quilt in years.. :)

    ReplyDelete