Round Robin - Lisa's Quilt

This month, I began work on Lisa Tucker's quilt. When it arrived, the white part with the stitch and flip triangles had just been completed.

I didn't want to disrupt the stitch and flip design or terminate the medallion style, so I decided to add a border all the way around.

While it's hard to tell at a distance, the fabrics are almost exclusively batiks, so I kept with that.

I decided my contribution should bring in a bit more color, so I opted to do an inverse of the values in the precious addition.

This top is getting to be really large. I'm hoping Lisa didn't have her heart set on a wall-hanging.

Cascading Stars

Inspired by Jacquie Gering's Craftsy class, Improvisational Piecing, Modern Design, I created this fun wall hanging.

As an added bonus for all of you, I have a tutorial and free pdf pattern from Craftsy or here. Let's start with some action shots. For each star block, I cut four 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" rectangles of the background fabric, and two 2 1/2" x 4" rectangles and two 2 1/2" x 6" rectangles of a colorful print that reads as a solid.

Each rectangle needs a stitch and flip triangle. Place a printed rectangle right sides together with the background. You will sew using a 1/4" seam. I have marked the stitch line with a black Frixion pen for display purposes, but marking is not necessary. You have two choices:

or 

After choosing one of the photos above, make two of each. Press the smaller rectangle toward the corner of the background rectangle.

Flip over so the wrong sides of the fabric are showing. Place a ruler in the corner of the background piece, even with the edges, and cut off any portion of the print rectangle that extends beyond the background fabric.

Flip back over so the right sides are showing. Peek behind the print triangle. Cut the background fabric even with the seam allowance of the print fabric.

Place the rectangles so that the stitch and flip triangles are in the center.

Stitch together with 1/4" seams.

And stitch together some more.

Print off my handy, dandy piecing instructions from Craftsy or here and piece the top together.

 

For the quilting, I employed Jacquie's serpentine quilting technique.

I popped on my walking foot, chose the curvy stitch on my machine, maxed out my stitch length, and widened my stitch width. I worked from the center to the right side, flipped the quilt around, and worked from the center to the right side again. Each time I made a line of stitching, I went from top to bottom, clipped the thread, and went from top to bottom again.

I followed a seam line to make sure my first serpentine line was straight. After that, I lined up the edge of my waling foot with the outer edge of my previous line of stitching.

I cut leftover 2 1/2" strips from the stars to 2 1/4" for my scrappy binding.

If you make your own Cascading Stars, please share in the Quiting Mod Flickr group.

I'm linking up with:

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10 Quilty Little Secrets + 2

1. The decision to pin baste or spray baste is a delicate balance between the tedious nature of pin basting and paranoia that inhaling aerosol glue fumes is going to cause me some sort of invisible bodily harm. In the back of my mind, adhesive mist is to be feared. I blame this phobia on my previous pregnancies. I started reading labels, and much to my dismay, many had warnings about about the products causing cancer in California. Is it too much to hope that the product's cancer-causing tendencies do not extend to New Mexico? I suspect so. Soon I realized wall plaster, and super glue, and spray paint, and about every craft item I touched had some sort of ominous warning.

2. I hand sewing the binding onto the back side of every quilt because, in spite of my efforts, I always miss sections when attempting binding entirely by machine.

3. I stopped going to the local quilt shop where I took my first quilt class since they took in several cats, and I'm wildly allergic. I don't mind blog posts featuring pets though; I've had no allergic reactions via the internet.

4. Denyse Schmidt and Anna Marie Horner fabrics don't make my socks go up and down. I saw that expression online somewhere, and I think it's funny, so I'm stealing it

5. I don't prewash my fabrics, but sometimes they have bled and made me wish I had. But, I like to live dangerously, so I still don't. Besides, then I'd have to iron them, and if I enjoyed that I'd get to the big ol' pile of clothes under my ironing board.

6. I like to make smaller quilts since I have an irrational fear of being smothered by the bulk as I free-motion quilt larger projects. A rational fear would be the potential of being smushed beneath my fabric hoard with my legs sticking out like the wicked witch of the west without the awesome striped socks. Note to self: Buy striped socks.

7. I collect fabric and UFOs. I've lost track of how many UFOs I have. I'm not going to count either because I'd rather start another project.

8. I press to the side almost always.

9. Partial seams and English paper piecing scare me, so I stay away from them as if they were contagious diseases.

10. I run over my pins, but I use the skinny glass head ones, so it's ok. It's harder to hit a smaller target.

11. I use steam. It's like a high-class spa. Chush. Chush. (That's the steam sound, in case you were wondering.)

12. I learned the hard way about purchasing expensive, heavy sewing machines on eBay. Then, I learned you should forfeit your shipping cost and send the machine back to the eBay seller right away when it arrives damaged instead of trying to get it fixed. You will avoid shaming yourself at local businesses in a futile effort to correct the machine's maladies. The seller will get all their money back from FedEx, regardless of how badly the machine was packaged, but you won't. Bummer. You will feel stupid and ashamed because you wasted money that could have been spent on your fabric collection. And you are cheap. Or maybe that's just me.