Sewing Tumbling Blocks Patchwork

How to Sew a Tumbling Blocks Quilt

From the Sewing Room – Sewing the Jewel Tone Diamonds Tumbling Blocks Quilt (Part II)

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a new project stemming from Colour Inspiration Tuesday. It all started with the Jewel Tone Triangles colour scheme. What was supposed to be a quick example of how to use this colour scheme has turned into a significant part of my recent quilt story! My daughter has convinced me to actually make her a Jewel Tone Triangles-derived quilt. This quilt is my first effort at tumbling blocks and is now called Jewel Tone Diamonds.

Firstly, my daughter and I redesigned the quilt idea to fit her bed and the fabrics available locally. Together we cut the diamond pieces and did a trial layout. Then I set about finding out how to sew the Y-Seams of the tumbling blocks. I wrote you a tutorial about that process here.

Now I am in the process of constructing the Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt top. Some people have asked how to put the tumbling block units together. The short answer is…. You don’t. While the illusion of this quilt is of lots of three-unit pieces stacked together, this is not the simplest way to construct the patchwork. Let me tell you how……

The process I use to construct the Jewel Tone Diamonds Tumbling Block Quilt.

Tumbling blocks layout diagram — Here is the basic tumbling blocks design. Fabrics of three colour values are arranged in a repeating pattern to get the 3D effect.

The method I use is a divide and conquer process – breaking the patchwork up into pieces that will sew together most easily. This process will work for any tumbling block design. This is because it ignores the pictorial design and only relies on the grid-work of diamonds that underlies the tumbling blocks design.

Here is a basic diagram of the tumbling blocks design carved up into sew-able pieces.

So, what I am sewing as my basic patchwork unit is actually a six-pointed star within a hexagon. Not a three-diamond unit tumbling block. Let me step you through what this looks like in real life.

How to sew the basic Tumbling Blocks Hexagon Star Unit

Step 1

The very first thing to do is to lay out your diamonds for the section of quilt you are working on and separate them into the units that need to be sewn. This makes it easier to see what has to be sewn to what next. Unless you have a cat or small child to keep disturbing them for you…..

Anyway, pets and small children aside, this is what you are aiming for:

tumbling blocks units — Separate your Tumbling Blocks diamonds into hexagon sewing units.

Make sure each diamond is in it’s correct relative position in the quilt, but otherwise ignore the tumbling blocks design. Right now we are trying to see stars and hexagons!

Step 2

Let’s use a methodical way to sew the hexagon-star units together.

Start on the left side of your hexagon unit and sew the three leftmost diamonds together in order from the top down. First sew the top two diamonds together, leaving the seam open one quarter of an inch at the broad angle end.

sewing tumbling blocks — Sew the first two diamonds together from the narrow point towards the broad point.

If you are not sure how to stop at the quarter seam allowance without marking it, I have covered this in detail in my post on how to sew great Y-seams.

Open it up and press the seams open.

Now add the third diamond in this group in the same way. Sew from the pointy end to the the broad end and leave the seam allowance un-sewn. Press with seams open.

Step 3

Now we need to do two Y-seams. We want to add in these two diamonds next:

I usually sew the bottom one in first, as it causes the seam allowances to nest better later and reduce bulk in the middle of the hexagon star unit. But don’t get too uptight about this if you accidentally start with the top one instead. It will be fine.

If you need help sewing the Y-seams, I step you through this in the previous post about sewing the Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt.

Once you are done, flat press with seams open and you will have a piece of patchwork that looks like this.

Sewing tumbling blocks step 4

Step 4

The next step is simply to repeat steps 2 and 3 with the other half of the hexagon star diamond set that you laid out in step 1.

Then your layout assembly should look like this. Two sewn half-units and two loose diamonds. We are going to get this done before those kids and cats mess this up after all……

As an aside, you might notice if you compare this photo to the last, that I have changed my mind about the position of several diamond colours. It’s called designing on the fly…. or quilting your own story! I tend to do this quite a bit. In all likelihood, it won’t be the last deviation from the “pattern” that my daughter and I settled on. She won’t mind…. the original layout was a bit arbitrary anyway.

Step 5

Now we need to get those two half-units sewn together. Basically this is just a straight seam. But there are two things we need to achieve in this seam, and therefore to keep in mind.

The first thing is that we need to remember is to keep the seam allowances open on both ends of this seam. If you forget this, you will be grumpy! Both ends of this middle seam are going to eventually be Y-seams. To get those last two diamonds in we will be returning to our set-in seam strategy.

The second thing is: you need to get those points lined up as best you can in the middle of the six-pointed star. Everyone’s tolerance of how well points need to match is different. I’m pretty fussy, and I wish I could be more relaxed about it. Some care here is advised though, as points that are too sloppy are going to make your tumbling blocks look like they are not well stacked! I will aim to write a tutorial about how I match tricky points another day soon, but in the meantime you will need to use your favourite method to get your points matched to your satisfaction.

sewing tumbling blocks step 5 — Two half-units joined with centre seam. Don’t forget to leave the seam allowances un-sewn at both ends!

Step 6

Sew in the last two diamonds with your amazing Y-seam skills (revisit the method here if you need to, but you should be a pro by now!). You will now have a completed hexagon star unit to add to your tumbling blocks quilt.

Step 7

Continue dividing and sewing your tumbling blocks quilt into manageable units like this. At the edges of the quilt you will have partial units. Remember this original diagram? These part-units are fine. They are supposed to be incomplete.

Here is my stack of units finished ready to complete the Jewel Tone Diamonds tumbling blocks quilt top.

sewing tumbling blocks units step 7 — Tumbling block hexagon star units all done.

How to sew the Hexagon Star Tumbling Blocks Quilt Units together

Once you are ready to start assembling the tumbling blocks quilt from your hexagon star units, the process is relatively simple. Start with the top row of units and simply sew them together down the straight seams. Remember, leave the seam allowances open!! Add in the loose diamonds that go in between the large units, to complete the very top of the patchwork.

Also at this point I sew the 3-diamond units on the lefthand side of the quilt to their neighbouring hexagon star unit. Your pieces will now look like this. One completed row, plus some fish-shaped units down the lefthand side.

Sewing tumbling blocks together step 1

Then add one unit at a time to the next row. Sew the seams in the order shown in the next diagram. Sew the first straight seam and press. Then sew the second straight seam that makes up the first Y-seam. Don’t forget to always sew from the middle of a Y-seam outwards to the free end. That way you not push any excess fabric into the Y-seam and everything will sit flat. Sew the third seam, also from the middle out. Great! First piece in.

Sewing in the second row of tumbling blocks

Sew the next piece in, in the same way, etc., etc. until you are all done!

sewing tumbling blocks units together

I’ll leave you with a photo of my Jewel Tone diamonds quilt progress to date. I like it. So pretty!

Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt progress | Clever Chameleon Quilting

Finishing up

One final comment. I can hear some of you wondering why I didn’t just sew it together as a series of tumbling blocks. Well you could. But I didn’t fancy trying to line up the points at the junctions at the same time as pulling off a Y-seam.

tumbling blocks sewing alternative — Is it possible to get all this lined up nicely?

Remember, until I started this quilt, I had never sewn Y-seams before. But even now, I don’t think that this would be fun. And quilting should definitely be fun! If you do your tumbling blocks this way, I’d love to hear how you manage it, and how hard it is! Maybe it is easier than I expect?….. Perhaps it gives you more control over how the points line up? Please let me know.

PS. These hexagon star blocks also work to make other designs based on diamonds. Just rearrange the colours differently and you have a star quilt instead. (Or is it circles of tumbling blocks?) Designs abound!

Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest or FB. All your follow options can be found here. And don’t forget to link up all your current quilting projects on Tuesdays at our Colour Inspiration Linky parties!

The Chameleon turns rainbow with pleasure when he hears from you. I am more reserved, so I will respond in gratitude by email instead. Now that it’s your turn…. Scroll right to the end, leave me a comment and tell me, what do you think? Thanks for connecting!

July 29, 2017January 19, 2024

Sewing Y-Seams and Tumbling Blocks

From the Sewing Room – Sewing the Jewel Tone Diamonds Tumbling Blocks Quilt (Part I)

Over the last few weeks I have been working on a new project stemming from Colour Inspiration Tuesday. It all started with the Jewel Tone Triangles colour scheme.

The Jewel Tones Triangles colour palette sparked an idea that immediately appealed to my daughter. It was a small tumbling blocks quilt design with drifting colour transitions between the blue-greens and the pink-purples. I chose tumbling blocks for the design because this photo cries out for some sort of 3D design. And now my daughter wants it for her bed. ASAP. She loves the colours and is fascinated by the 3D effect. But the design was never really intended to be made, let alone in bed-size!

Anyway, fast forward a week or two, and by the time Jewel Tone Triangles went to press, my daughter had convinced me to do it. She has grown out of her Disney Frozen themed quilt (fair enough) and she feels entitled to a quilt upgrade! You can read about the evolution of the Jewel Tones Diamonds quilt design in this post.

Coming to grips with the Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt Design

But it is easy to draw up a quilt plan without any thought to the difficulty of construction. Which is, of course, exactly what I did with Jewel Tone Diamonds. I was primarily playing with colour relationships and colour values. Not intentionally designing a quilt to make.

So I am mildly embarrassed to say, that the shear number of Y-seams in this design caught me a little by surprise. Simply through a lack of forward-thinking. So it wasn’t really until my daughter and I had modified the design to fit her bed, bought the fabric, cut the fabric and laid it out, that the Y-seams situation dawned on me. A fact for which I am actually thankful, because it is a skill I am well-overdue to learn and may otherwise have dodged yet again.

How to sew Y-seams (also known as set-in seams)

Failed tumbling blocks — Don’t worry if your first attempts at tumbling blocks aren’t great. This is what my first two Y-seam attempts look like!! Meh!

Until this project, I had never sewn tumbling blocks before. So I did a bit of internet research. The most useful resource I found was this video by the Fat Quarter Shop.

Fast forward another couple of weeks, and I am about halfway through sewing Jewel Tone Diamonds. I am now quite confident at Y-seams and actually enjoy sewing them! Figure that!! Not what I expected! There is something about opening up the piece and seeing it lie flat that I find intensely satisfying.

I know that I am not alone in my (turns out, unjustified) fear of Y-seams. There are plenty of no-Y-seam tumbling blocks patterns out there to prove it. But it turns out that Y-seams are not that hard! Easier than matching points, actually. So, I have decided to show you how I conquered them. Stick to this formula and you might be as pleasantly surprised as I am.

Tumbling blocks improvement — My next attempts at tumbling blocks are much better!!

What you will need……

Some fabric diamonds. To get the exact tumbling blocks effect you see here, the diamonds must have 4 sides of equal length and two 60° angles and two 30° angles. The size of the diamonds is completely up to you, but don’t go too small. You don’t want to end up with frustratingly small pieces. Diamonds with 4-5″ sides are easy to work with. I had left overs after cutting my quilt, but diamonds made from scrap fabric will also do. I cut my diamonds with my diamond die and GO! cutter. If this is not an option for you, you can also cut diamonds from fabric strips using a ruler that has a 60° angle marked on it. Accuracy is key though. If your diamonds are sloppy, the piecing will be a nightmare.
A presser foot with a quarter-inch guide for your sewing machine. This method relies very heavily on this. This foot gets rid of the need to mark each and every seam allowance at the corners. I don’t have the time or patience to mark hundreds of seam allowances!
Your sewing machine set to a shorter stitch length than usual. Mine defaults to setting “2.5”. I turn it down to “2” for this. The shorter stitch length is important to make sure no seams start to unravel as you sew in the third diamond. It also helps you stop in the correct place at the corners, without over-shooting the seam allowance by half a stitch.
A hot iron. Quality spray starch is also useful.

Sewing Tumbling Blocks Step One

Take two diamonds and lay them one over the other, right sides together. Starting from one of the pointy ends (30° angles), sew a quarter-inch seam towards one of the wide corners (60° angles).

sewing tumblng blocks step one — Sew a quarter-inch seam allowance from the pointy end of the diamond towards a wide corner.

Stop when you get to a quarter-inch before the end. Reverse sew for a couple of stitches and break thread.

sewing tumbling blocks step one — Stop one quarter-inch from the edge of the diamond pieces.

How do you know when you are 1/4 inch from the end?! When you think you are close, stop with the needle in the down position and swivel the diamonds so that the sewing line is now down the next side of the diamonds. If the quarter-inch guide rests on the edge, you are in the right place (see photo below). Swivel the fabrics back to the correct position and secure with backstitch.

If fabric peeks out to the right under the quarter-inch guide (see next photo), swivel the diamonds back to the correct direction, stitch the required number of stitches to cover the gap you observed and re-check your position. Secure with backstitch.

If you swivel your fabrics and find you have gone too far, there is nothing for it but to unpick the overshot stitches. Sorry. Learn to stop too early rather than too late.

Sewing Tumbling Blocks Step Two

Take your diamonds out of the sewing machine. Your first seam should look like this.

Open up the diamonds, lay flat and press the seam open.

Sewing Tumbling Blocks Step Three

Layer your third diamond underneath the two joined pieces, such that one of the narrow points lines up with the top dog-ear of the fabric on the left. The top right edge lies along the edge of the diamond on the right and the large corner lines up with the large corner of the diamond on the right. If you have sewn an accurate quarter inch seam in step one, this should be straight-forward.

Start sewing a new quarter-inch seam from the free narrow corner of the right-hand diamond. In the picture above this is the bottom right corner. You will be sewing towards the end of the first seam that terminated before the seam allowance. When you get about two-thirds of the way along the seam, pause.

Now fold the left hand diamond corner out of the way until it opens up the un-sewn portion of the first seam. Hold the folded corner out of the way as you sew the rest of the seam. Sew to the very edge of the first diamond, including over the seam allowance, but do not stitch into the folded back diamond.

Secure with a couple of backstitches and cut thread. Your work should now look like this photo below.

Open up your sewing, lay the pieces flat and press the seam open.

ing tumbling blocks step three — It is starting to look like a tumbling block, but with one seam still not sewn.

Sewing Tumbling Blocks Step Four

The final step! Fold the diamond that has two attached sides in half so that the second and third diamonds line up over the top of each other. It will look like the photo below.

Sew a quarter-inch seam from the wide corner at the top middle of the photo above, to the thin corner top right. This direction of sewing is important. Doing it this way prevents any excess fabric being pushed to the centre of your Y-seams. There shouldn’t be excess fabric, but if there is a little, it is harmless on the edge of your tumbling block. If it is in the centre, your block will bubble and not sit flat. Remember, sew from the wide to the pointy end, and it will all be good!

Now you are done with the sewing. Open up your tumbling block and press the last seam open.

Sewing tumbling blocks step four - perfect Y-seams — Open up your tumbling block and press the last seam open.

Flip your tumbling block over. Press one last time and voila! A beautiful Y-seam.

You’ll be a tumbling blocks/Y-seams pro before you know it!

Once you conquer this method, the Y-seams go together like clockwork. I promise! When I do these steps in this order, Y-seams work every time. It honestly feels a little like magic!

Clever Chameleon logo

In my next post I will tell you more about how I put the units together to make the quilt top. There is one way I think gets the easiest matching points. And while I am enjoying the Y-seams, I am not celebrating all the matching points! I’ll add the link here once the post is up…. or subscribe to get it delivered straight to your inbox.

Until then, keep Quilting Your Own Story!

July 13, 2017January 19, 2024

From the Sewing Room: Jewel Tone Diamonds

The Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt Design: My first quilt to be made from Colour Inspiration Tuesday!

A few days ago I was playing around with an idea that arose from Colour Inspiration Tuesday. Remember this?!

Jewel Tone Triangles-inspired quilt layout: Jewel Tone Diamonds — Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt design from Colour Inspiration Tuesday

If not, you can find the origins of this quilt idea in this post here – Colour Inspiration Tuesday – Jewel Tone Triangles. Briefly, I used a fascinating photo by Ferdinand Stöhr at Unsplash.com to generate a colour palette I loved. In addition, the photo itself is very geometric. It immediately brought to mind a quilt of 3D triangular pyramids in sweeping colour changes of purples and blue-greens.

Originally I was just going to create the colour scheme and serve it up for Colour Inspiration Tuesday as per usual. But the urge to design a quilt in this colour scheme was too strong. So I ended up using the Jewel Tone Triangle colours, plus two more related tones, to mock up a quick example of a tumbling blocks quilt. This was the original Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt design above. And that should have been the end of that!

But I am a sucker for: pretty colours, new quilt ideas and my daughter……

As it happened, my daughter wandered past as I was finishing that post, and said she really liked That design for Her bed…..**batting eyelids here** AND I was already considering taking a project with me while we travelled for a week for Paul’s work…… AND a local store is having it’s annual sale which means that Prima solid colour flat fats (50cmx52cm pre-cuts) are $1 each, which is 75% off…..

Flat Fats for Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt — Fabrics for Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt

So, the Voice in my head that must be obeyed said “If I take some fabric with me, I could have a quilt cut out and ready to sew when we get home next week….”

Then the same Voice said “And with fabric at $4 per metre, it is a Very good time to be experimenting with a new design. Even if said fabric is not the best quality that money can buy”.

And I don’t argue with the Voice. :). The Voice is also right about the very average fabric quality, but this can be a bonus when it comes to cutting time… It is sooooo much harder to make that first cut into a beautiful print or batik, especially on an unproven design!! These will be perfect.

Anyway, to cut a long story short…..

I bought 11 different solid colour 100% cotton fabrics in the colour range covered by the Jewel Tone Triangles colour scheme. This is quite a few more colours than in the original colour scheme of 7, I know. But this is what happens when you use something as an ideas springboard and start quilting your own story!

I started with the basic colours of the colour scheme and expanded the colour set with what looked good in the store. The new colour scheme (Jewel Tone Diamonds) now looks like this:

Jewel Tone Diamonds color scheme

These colours are slightly brighter than the original design, but that’s fine, my daughter and I love bright. More colours gives me more options for variety in the tumbling blocks, and enough fabric to expand the pattern to a single bed size. Brilliant!

Expanding the Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt design and cutting the diamonds

We have spent this week in Arkaroola, an oasis in the South Australian Outback. So, I have been admiring this view out the laundry door while ironing my pretties ready for cutting! Much nicer than the dismal suburban winter at home!!

Arkaroola

Child using GO! cutter — It is great being able to share the cutting with my daughter. The GO! cutter allows her to be involved even though she is too young to use a rotary cutter!

I re-designed the Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt to accommodate my 11 fabric colours and to be single-bed sized. I worked out that if I used my Diamonds 4×4 GO! Die, a single bed top would require about 6 diamonds across and 12 rows of tumbling blocks along the length. Then my daughter and I used my GO! cutter to cut out 20 diamonds in each colour for her new quilt and she and I did a test layout of the pieces together.

Passing on the love

My daughter is just beginning to show an interest in quilting, so this project is perfect for her to start participating. Because I have designed this quilt with the diamond GO! cutter die in mind, she is able to help with the cutting. She loves to help cut the pieces by winding the handle. I also got some “help” laying out the pieces. However, since I like to make adjustments on the fly, this is a slightly trickier process to share with my new apprentice!

Diamonds cut out, ready for layout. — Diamonds cut out and ready for layout.

Starting to layout the Jewel Tone Diamonds.

Once we had an idea of the number of pieces we would need for each particular colour, we cut more diamonds as needed. This is what our current layout looks like:

Jewel Tone Diamonds quilt trial layout — In the end we were pretty pleased with our expanded Jewel Tone Diamonds design. So pretty!

Colour Value and the Tumbling Block quilt design

Here’s the most important tip for tumbling block quilts…… It is important to pay absolute attention to the colour values of your fabrics and where you place them. To begin with, you must decide which of the three faces of the “cube” you want to be the lightest, which will be the darkest and which will have an intermediate colour value. Then you have to stick to this decision for each set of three pieces that make up a block. Otherwise the 3D illusion of this design does not work.

My daughter actually grasped this concept pretty well. To help us keep to our chosen regime of lightest value on the top of each cube, medium value on the left and darkest value on the right, we took occasional photos in black and white. This is the easiest way to judge colour value.

Black and white photo of Jewel Tone Diamonds — To easily judge the colour value of your quilts, take photos in black and white.

A problem and the solution:

Black and white color value comparison — The two fabrics on the left and right of this cube unit are actually quite different greens but with the same colour values.

In our colour palette there are two fabrics that I have struggled to differentiate as to which has the darker value. One is fairly saturated in colour (is a hue), and the other is a tone. The toned fabric has been darkened with black, but also diluted with white. So the two fabrics have ended up a similar colour value.

In the end, I have designated the more saturated colour to be the “darker” fabric so that we can be consistent with our layout. Then, when it comes to quilting time, I can help maintain the 3D illusion by quilting the toned fabric with a light thread and the saturated fabric with a dark thread. The overall effect of this will be to darken the perceived value of the saturated fabric and to lighten the toned fabric, preserving the 3D tumbling block design. Sometimes you just can’t get enough absolutely perfect fabric colours when you are shopping for a quilt….. Don’t despair, just think about what else you can do to get the effect you want!

Heading home to sew Jewel Tone Diamonds

Cutting pieces for a quilt, walks in the bush, campfire cooking with the kids and helping with the local war on a Mexican Poppy infestation….. It has been a lovely time away.

Arkaroola is a beautiful rugged landscape and home to the Yellow-footed Rock Wallaby.

It will also be nice to be back at the sewing machine next week. Although…. now that I have all those diamonds cut and laid out, I can see just how many Y-seams I have! Just for the record, I haven’t sewn Y-seams before….. this could be interesting! Anyway, my adorable daughter is being quite insistent that she should sew them. Never mind she has never even sewn a basic seam yet! I have promised to help her to learn how to make a quilt, but obviously (and to her disgust) we will start with something beginner friendly. Now that she is finally showing some interest in sewing, I want her to love quilting….. I’ll keep you posted on that journey too.

blue Clever Chameleon logo In the meantime, we have 680 km to cover to get home. Then I get to have a day at the South Australian Quilters’ Guild Festival of Quilts. The day after that I plan to visit a Tentmakers of Cairo display. What a lovely week to look forward to!

I’ll definitely be checking out lots of quilting stories this week!

Update: you can find my progress on the Jewel Tone Diamonds Quilt, including a new tutorial on how to sew Y-seams here.

July 7, 2017January 19, 2024

From the Sewing Room: Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt

The Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt: a Handiquilter group homework exercise

At our last Handiquilter meeting we were given not one, but two homework exercises!! We are allowed to combine them if we see fit, but I have had no inspiration in this direction. So I am doing them separately. The first mission, should we choose to accept it, is to do a small whole cloth design using changing thread colours as the main design element. I have put this exercise on hold for now.

The second homework exercise is to participate in a project for the upcoming SA Quilter’s Guild Festival of Quilts. The organisers of this project are asking for small modern quilted pieces of 23″x16″ in size. The theme is “modern” and the edges don’t need to be finished. The organiser has a plan to extensively trim and then finish the pieces to make an interactive display.

I have decided to participate in this second project. It gives me a small inexpensive project to do, with a deadline. Perfect for my current mission to actually do more quilting practice, and do it without breaking the bank. Hopefully, I will be able to tell you more about the project after I’ve seen it at the quilt festival in a few weeks. At the moment I am a little short on details, and I’m not sure about how much is public knowledge for sharing. So you’ll have to wait for the whole story.

In the meantime, you will have to settle for a free appliqué template of the Dandelion Wishes mini quilt I made.

My Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt concept

“Modern” to me means lots of negative space, bold (probably solid colours), improv piecing and/or heavy on the geometric shapes. I am not doing any piecing for this project. (Just a tactical decision, I quite like improv piecing.) I have decided to appliqué a bold, colourful word (the pretty kind of colourful, not the other kind!!) in the centre of a neutral coloured background. There is a clear need to confine the design to the centre of the mini quilt, due to the aforementioned trimming plan. So lots of negative space also allows for this.

The word I have chosen is “wish”. My mini quilt will have the word “wish” raw-edge appliquéd such that the “i” is the stem of a stylised dandelion clock, and I’ll have several seeds escaping, blown from the stem. Not a totally original meme I know, but I will be drafting it from scratch, and it will be 100% the way I want it.

Here is the scan of my concept drawing:

My Dandelion Wishes Mini Quilt process

Dandelion Wishes design:

I scanned my original sketch and used Inkscape software to outline the shapes.

Dandelion wishes mini quilt applique outlines — My Dandelion Wishes mini quilt appliqué design

If you would like the pdf to print this design for your own use, you can download it here: Dandelion Wishes appliqué pdf.. Don’t forget to reverse the shapes when you trace them to produce a readable design!

Fabric choices:

In my current stash I do not have any large pieces of neutral fabrics I would consider typical for a modern background. I am definitely more a batiks and brights girl. I did find one mottled grey batik that might have sufficed, but in the end I didn’t think it would be right.

Reverse side of fabric — Using the reverse side of a fabric if it suits is a valid choice.

So, being short of shopping time, and trying not to buy fabric for quilting practice, I have had to think a bit more laterally. In the end I have decided to use the reverse side of a fabric that I am not overly fond of. The front is a wispy gold brown colour with white roses printed on. However, the reverse is a light cream colour with a sort of dreamy, wispy quality. Not a solid, but I think quite appropriate for the wishes theme.

As for the appliqué…. again, there not many solid colour scraps in my house. I have settled for bright printed fabrics.

auditioning fabrics for the dandelion wishes mini quilt — Auditioning fabrics for the Dandelion Wishes mini quilt

Appliqué pieces:

I generally print appliqué shapes in reverse onto sticker paper (rather than tracing them by hand straight to fusible adhesive). I do this to save time. Once the fusible adhesive is ironed onto my fabrics, I just stick the sticker printouts onto the paper backing of the adhesive and cut through all three layers. Fabric, adhesive and sticker. When I peel off the paper backing for the adhesive, the stickers are removed too.

Use of stickers for applique — I use stickers for printing out appliqué shapes when I am not in the mood for tracing.

Free-motion Appliqué:

Once all the appliqué pieces were ironed into place, I layered the mini quilt top over scrap wadding, pinned it and free-motion stitched 4-5 times around each appliqué shape. I added a stitched spine to each leaf, thread painted the dandelion parachutes and seeds and signed my name. Then I added a backing, ready for quilting.

thread painted dandelion seeds — Thread painted dandelion seeds

Quilting:

So, by this stage, I am not at all sure that this design particularly fits the “modern” theme anymore. I only used one solid fabric in the whole thing, ended up substituting the stylised geometric triangles on the dandelion clock for a more traditional pictorial representation by thread, and didn’t improvise a thing. So I have decided just to quilt it however I want. I have chosen a wavy line design occasionally broken with circles to emphasise the dreamy quality of the background. Is this modern? I don’t know, it matters little.

I thought this quilting design would be quick and easy, but today I am having trouble getting a nice even stitch length. I think it is a combination of tiredness (the whole family was sick last week) and the long stretches of stitching. Normally I quilt motifs that change direction frequently, so the quilt doesn’t travel far in any one move. So the awkwardness of this was a bit of a discovery, and more “practice” than I had anticipated. Which obviously is a good thing, after I have moved on from the mild frustration of suddenly wishing I had a stitch regulator on my HQ Sweet Sixteen….

Dandelion Wishes mini quilt — Be careful what you wish for…. I don’t really wish for a stitch regulator, what I really want is not to need one!

Anyway, it is now all finished and trimmed to size. Obviously, if I was finishing this as a normal mini quilt, it would need a binding of some sort. Or I could turn it into a cushion…..

Dandelion Wishes cushion pillow — The Dandelion Wishes appliqué design fits nicely on a throw pillow.

So, there you have it. If you make something with the Dandelion Wishes pattern on it, I would love to see it. How will you make it your own? Perhaps you can make it more “modern” than I achieved!!

June 23, 2017January 19, 2024

From the Sewing Room – The Daisy Motif

Learn how to quilt this informal daisy motif onto large, pieced quilt squares.

Remember how I said I was going to start doing some charity quilting to increase my quilting practice without using up my entire quilting budget? Today I plucked up the courage to start on my first charity quilt. There is a part of me that was a bit concerned that the owners of the quilt top may not be enthralled by whatever I did. I am not a professional quilter, after all. They have already invested their time and money into this quilt – what if I did bad things to it?! But that attitude will not get quilts into the hand of recipients or practice into my quilting muscles, so I took a few deep breaths and this is what happened….

Choosing a quilting motif

I quickly discovered one interesting thing. Apparently I think a lot about quilting a quilt while I am piecing it. It was quite a new experience to decide how to quilt a piece without weeks of prior musing. I can’t say I was prepared for how different it felt to be handling a quilt I was not intimately familiar with. Has anyone else experienced this?!

Coffee and TimTams charity quiit all pinned — The beautiful quilt I received to quilt. It arrived thoroughly pin basted and ready to go.

The quilt I have been entrusted with has chocolate brown pieced squares with cream coloured sashing. I like to think of it as Coffee and TimTams (an Australian chocolate biscuit). My daughter argues that it is actually Maltesers and Milo (more Australiana). But anyway, at first glance I assumed it was a man’s quilt and instantly thought to quilt a strong geometric design on it. But on closer inspection I discovered that the fabric prints were predominately floral. So I decided that this little beauty needed something feminine in the way of quilting to bring out it’s gentle side.

While I got my head around this thought, I stabilised the quilt by stitching in the ditch in every sashing seam (ie every seam except those inside the brown boxes).

Stabilised quilt — Coffee and TimTams is a 5×5 grid of squares measuring around 6″. The quilt is 47″ square

Working up the Daisy Motif

The process of stabilising the quilt thankfully helped me feel more connected to the quit and able to decide how to proceed. One of my priorities was to leave the quilt feeling soft and comforting. Eventually I decided that I wanted to fill the the boxes with a simple flower motif. Before I attempted this though, I did two things. Firstly, I mocked up a digital example on Inkscape software to see what it might look like.

Digital trial of daisy motif — I started with photos of two representative blocks. Then I drew a basic circle and petal design. Finally I decided to fill in the centre spiral and place a line in the centre of each petal.

Secondly, once I was happy with this design, I got out a good old fashioned pen and paper to see how I could quilt the daisy motif as a continuous design.

First attempts at daisy motif — First: I tried drawing the petals and then filling in the centre in one pass. As you can see, it wasn’t a huge success. The petals aren’t nicely formed and the centres are jagged.

Second attempt at daisy motif — Next: I tried drawing the spiral centres first, then the petal outlines and then going back to fill in the petal centre lines. This is better, but the double outline is busy, and escaping the block looks messy.

Third attempt at daisy motif — This time I did the same as my second attempt, but just traced the original centre circle when I returned to add lines to the petals. Much simpler and tidier.

If you would like to learn this design by first tracing it, you can download a free pdf of the daisy motif here: Daisy motif free printable.

Quilting the Daisy Motif

To get the daisy motif to show up better against the mildly busy fabrics of this quilt I opted for a rayon (40wt) thread in antique white for the top thread. In the bobbin I had 80wt cotton/poly thread.

Step One: use chalk to mark thirds on the centre fabric of the block. Quilt the stem of the daisy and the centre circle. Fill in the spiral now, if you want one.

Step Two: Quilt the petals clockwise out to the edge of the block. Stop each petal just short of block edges and the centre circle – this looks neater than accidentally crossing the lines.

Step Three: Once all the petals are outlined, fill in the centre line of each petal by travelling anti-clockwise around the centre circle.

Step Four: If you have forgotten to do the spiral, you have another opportunity to fill it in now. Otherwise, exit the block by completing the other side of the stem.

Finished daisy motif — The finished daisy quilting motif

A Bonus Variation of the Daisy Motif

In every second block, I didn’t add the centre spiral – so I have some open and some filled flowers. Truth be told, this is largely because I forgot to quilt the spiral into one of the flowers early on. Then I decided I liked the variation…. so now it’s a feature! Hahahahaha!

quilting spiral quilting In the sashing I did a simple leaf vine with the same thread combo. It is very nearly invisible but it gives a good overall texture. I left the star fabric squares un-quilted and filled the outer border with quick perpendicular lines. And finally, I put spirals in the four corners to echo the flower centres.