Here are images of a make-it-today quilt designed over lunch at Daisy's Diner yesterday, came home and got busy with cutting. Didn't sleep a wink last night, so it was up and at 'em when it was too tiresome to be annoyed about not sleeping.
This is the third in a sequence of turquoise quilts planned for the charity bees to add to the patriot butterfly and the lime-and-turquoise butterfly and pondscum work, simplified into naive style for a child and both finished earlier this week.
The quilt will be before adding border about 30" x 57"
This took 1 1/8 yards of light shade of turquoise cut into
4 strips, 7 1/2" by the width of the light cotton check material (aka weft)
6 strips 2" light for first border
This took 1 1/2 yards of the dark cotton calico floral print cut as follows:
4 strips, 7 1/2" by the width of the dark cotton calico floral print (on the weft also)
6 strips 3 1/2" by the width of the dark cotton calico floral print (on the weft also)
1 strip 4" by the width of the dark Cotton Calico floral print (weft or stretch width of cotton calico)
Sew and press open all seams as follows: 4" dark strip, 4(7 1/2" light strip, 7 1/2" dark strip) Beginning with the 4" dark strip and ending with the 7.5" dark strip, you should sew until you have a dark4", light7.5", dark7.5", light7.5", dark7.5", light7.5", dark7.5", light7.5", dark7.5", ( 9 rows beginning and ending with darks, and seams pressed down center or all the same way if you prefer. I figured 15 strips, but when I actually cut, I got 17 strips, which will add 5 inches to the width schema using 1/4" seam allowance. Cut all the rows 2.5" (2 1/2") or two and one half inches all the way down the line on the warp (same as the selvage) or length, that starts and ends with a 4" dark and a 7.5" dark, made a little shorter by virtue of the seam allowance of .25" (1/4") or one quarter of an inch.
Sew your 15 rows with the 7" dark strip top piece with a second strip turned opposite, with the 4" dark strip on top. That causes the basic bonehead bargello appearance as your quilt goes together.
Pin only if your machine does not have a built in walking foot such as upper end Pfaffs and the #8 super duper Bernina.
Treat yourself to swiss pins--glasshead tops with fine shafts. Using humongous pins results in small tear holes. Sorry, I didn't write the rule book, I just know what the rules are, and the right equipment helps you wind up with a product that will outlast the holey ones by decades of use and neutral-Ph soap care. I didn't write that rule either, but I have a couple of detergent-faded quilts that I let the male of the house throw into the laundry without telling him to set the machine at gentle motion wash and use neutral-Ph quilt soap. If you don't have a quilt store, go to a feed store in a farm community and ask for udder soap. Yes, cow udder soap. It's neutral-Ph, probably reasonably priced too, if you don't mind buying a gallon of the stuff. You only use 2 tablespoons with enough water to fill the gentle cycle wash that will clean your quilt top nicely.
If you are using such a sewing machine, be certainly sure you are using the upper dual feed or walking foot by raising the presser foot lifter, and pulling the built-in walker out-down-forward to engage it or whatever your machine instruction manual says. Otherwise, pin opposite ends face together and sew all the same way. If you do not sew all the same way you will be most sorry to be spending the time you saved doing a quickie quilt ripping and redoing, but not to worry.
Ripping out a seam you just sewed improperly is an exercise in developing a sense of humor quilters need and acquire as error appears. And if you sew it wrong the second or even third time wrong, welcome to the club. This stuff goes away after about your 600th quilt and you go into it armed with a determination you will be paying attention THIS TIME.
Square the edges with a rotary cutter and rotary cutting ruler. I like to use a rotary cutting 12.5" square on the corner edges because that's absolutely the best corner you will ever get on a quilt, and nothing else works as well, sorry.
Sew the six light 2" border strips together using 5 seams. Sew onto the squared quilt top.
Sew the six dark 3.5" border strips together using 5 seams also. Sew them onto the squared quilt top.
If you want more instructions, leave a message here within a day of now, and I'll try to remember what I did to get the 30x57" size. Keep in mind if you want this baby twice as wide and twice as long you need four times the above, and four times the fabric amount, almost exactly.
Scan 1
VERY ROUGH DRAFT to give you the idea of what works in this top. Beware: only the top row resembles the correct alignment of 4" and 7.5" strips, which will be OPPOSITE AND NOT THE SAME at the bottom
Scan 2
An end (both ends will be opposite because you reversed where the short 4" end was every other row--doh, it's not rocket science)
Scan 3
Somewhere in the middle showing a dark set of bricks alternated.
If I screw up and told you wrong or was unclear, I apologize. For me, this quilt is like falling off a log and takes a total of 5 hours from cut to starting the border. It's a great quilt for a toddler or baby, because you didn't donate 1,000 hours of your life to doing a cutesy quilt, unless you had to unsew the whole thing 10 or 20 times, that is. Surely, you will be looking alive if you attempt it and not doing silly stuff. I have 2 other advantages--factory experience in getting sewing things done assembly line style and a choice of the two best sewing machines in the world with 10 and 11" work area between the needle and the right side of the machine where the flywheel is usually located. Both my machines have built-in walking feet, too. When one is being serviced, I can use the other. I have a backup brother I got at Walmart for $200 that has around 200 stitches, but no attached walking foot. However, the feed system is so advanced even on this modest machine it feeds right on layers. The bad thing? Instead of 10" to have fabric lay flat, I may have less than 7" or 6". I don't know. The strategy of having a backup top of the line machine is great when service time requires you to wait 2 to 6 weeks until they repair/and/or clean the 30 or 40 machines ahead of yours.
Also, you can stop that frequency thingy by simply oiling the hook and keeping the bobbin and top areas clean of cotton lint. You have to use cotton thread. Trust me, you have to use cotton thread. Otherwise, pulling on the quilt top over time puts big holes where each stitch is. Instead of lasting for 400 to 600 years, your quilt gets under 10 years of heavy use, and less than that - as in the very first time - if dear darling uses bleach to really clean the quilt you sent him downstairs with, with the prayer he didn't leave a red sock in the machine to dye your loverly werk. It takes all our exercise of a sense of humor we developed over time making ripout mistakes to forgive such a deed and say, "Oh, thank you, thank you, Rhett Butler dearest."
See? That's why we quilt. It gives us perspective and a sense of humor that you CAN spend a thousand hours and still get a disaster at a later moment.
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