Accurately cutting, sewing and pressing! Sounds doable! Well we shall see! I bought a new rotary cutter last week. They were on sale and I decided my other one has to be close to 15 years old. I like to use old blades to trim my paper pieced blocks so it would be nice to have two and not have to switch out blades. Oh, I am so glad I did. I didn't get anything fancy, just a plain fiskar but it glides so much more smoothly. I think years ago I may have lost a little washer in my old cutter, could that be the difference? So I am hoping the new rotary cutter gives me some new confidence as I approach this adventure.
My first step is to layer a 10 inch white and 10 inch print right sides together. I then give them a spritz of starch and press. I love cutting thru starched fabrics and find pressing them together helps keep the pieces lined up. I used Jenny Doan's tutorial to make the HST's for the last chevron quilt I made. I just didn't like that the outside edges were bias. So since I am using a layer cake, I decided to use the cutting guide on the back of the layer cake to make my triangles. First I marked the layered squares. Four lines, two corner to corner and two across the center of the 10 inch square which gives me 8 half square triangles.
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| Time to start cutting! |
After cutting on those lines, I am marking a 1/4 inch seam line on each triangle. This is something hand piecers to do to insure their seam is the correct size. This is not something I will do for every quilt, but I am using them as training wheels here.
Let the stitching begin! Part of my plan is that I only make 32 triangles at any one session behind the machine. Hopefully, this will keep me focused on doing a great job. I am using my quarter inch foot and turning down the speed on my machine. This is not a marathon, this is about paying attention. So I carefully feed the triangles thru after making sure they are perfectly matched. I am letting the machine pull them thru, trying to avoid any tugging or pulling. I am being careful to keep the piece lined up all the way thru to the end. Once they are stitched, I am pressing the seams open to help with eliminate bulky seams coming together and hopefully help with accuracy. Next, since I used a scant 1/4 inch I can take a ruler with a 45 degree line and line it up with the seam and trim off dog ears and make them a perfect 4.5 inches.
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| Trimming! |
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| Dog ears trimmed a nice looking 4 1/2 inch unfinished block! |
I need 324 of these and then I can lay them out and start stitching them together.
