D255: Research

I actually got a nap out of Bub today.  With this precious time I didn't really touch any fabric at all, but did some research on quilting.

I've actually made a quilt before but it was a long time ago and I wanted to check I wasn't blindly making mistake I didn't know I'd made before. (Or making new ones. I'm so innovative.)  I also have a few errors in this quilt top, in spite of all my careful cutting and sewing - puckering in the triangles, a bit of a waist in some rows and slightly wobbly edges - and wanted to know if there were any techniques for correcting these.  It was surprisingly hard to dig up some solid support.  Nearly everything I found was to do with tension issues while quilting, troubleshooting machines and such.

I discovered this forum, reassuringly full of people who have also had similar problems (hurrah!).  These guys mostly recommended steaming, which I've already tried and I'm concerned that I'm overcooking parts of the white patterned fabric and it's colouring yellow.  Maybe some fabric between iron and quilt would do, but I've already tried setting it a bit.  These errors aren't that huge and may not even really show up once the batting is there...

Some recommended "quilting it out" which is to quilt heavily in the area to reduce any visible puckering.

What that discussion did share, however, was this awesome tutorial on realigning blocks and borders:  Sharon Schamber's Beginning Quilter : Magical Basting p1.

This, alone, was worth the time spent looking online.

D213: Chipping away amongst it all

So I made that cake last night so there was something for my folk when they visited for lunch. Too rich! Too rich! they said.  Oh well, more for us!

According to this, I'll be making quarter-square triangles (QST), not half-square triangles (HST).

I've been double checking my method for making up the QSTs.

I am planning to make up my QSTs by sewing two squares together, right sides facing, then cutting the sandwich into four triangles (squares when unfolded at the seam) by slicing corner to corner twice.  I'm hoping that what I've got will be sufficient for a cot quilt, otherwise I'll be wishing I'd discovered this HSTx8 tutorial before I began cutting:

There is also this tutorial for HSTs. I watched it with the sound off and it still made great sense, it's that good.

I also really like this tutorial, which also works without sound. Isn't video grand?



Four per square is not bad and it has meant I've clipped small portions off my scraps rather than using whole pieces.  There are some fabrics that wouldn't give me an 8" square, so all is well.  My only concern is not warping the pieces when making it up, but that's something to be careful of regardless of your grain direction.