Saturday, October 21, 2017

Squirrel video and a small finish





I have a new favorite YouTube quilting video channel: Jordan Fabrics from Grants Pass, OR. Donna Jordan gives really clear instructions for some nice patterns, and doesn't do a hard sell of their products. The camera angles are good and I've been learning quite a bit by watching her techniques.

The video linked above, for the pattern "Teatime" gave me a total SQUIRREL! moment, though. She makes the green quilt using 40 green batik 2.5" strips and the technique is fast and fun. My brain said, "Hey! I could do that with scrappy 2.5" strips!" and I was off and running.


I had the equivalent of about 40 strips in my "rainbow bright" scrap box. These are fabrics that are too multi-color to fit into any single color category. Most of them are not full width of fabric, so I just sewed shorter pieces together until each strip was about 40-42" long. (You can see two of our boat radios in the background of this photo. I listen to marine radio traffic all day.)


Following the video (which you should watch for full details about how to finger press to make everything easier), I sewed together five strips. You can see my pieced strips here: stripes sewn end to end with cupcakes, several Kaffe fabrics in the bottom row, etc.


Then each set of five is sewn back together into a tube, so the middle strip is now folded along the bottom.


Press the tube carefully so that bottom fold doesn't get creased but the seams are flat.


Cut into triangles. Donna uses a special ruler for this, but I just marked a regular square with some tape for guidance.


Open up the triangles and admire straight, square, scrappy, strippy blocks made without foundations. Half the blocks have the carefully folded center strip in the middle (bottom row) and half have the last seam of the tube in the middle (top row.) The latter just needs to have that final seam pressed flat.


Because of the two different styles of blocks, if you lay the quilt out by alternating the blocks, there are ZERO strip seams to match. No foundations? No seam matching? This is a total winner of a block for this lazy quilter!


And speaking of lazy, this little finish required no seam matching, either. In fact, there isn't a single seam in the entire quilt except for the binding! The cute panel is wide enough that it makes a nice size baby quilt all on its own. It's about 36"x42" of bright, happy animals and the fabric is very soft and smooth.


My current set up with the sewing machine in the salon/living room doesn't have a nice supportive area to the left of the Juki, so I wanted something really small to maneuver in the space available. I kept the quilting super simple, just outlining the sweet animal shapes and the border.


The wind helpfully flipped the little quilt up so you can see the back in coordinating fabric. A nice stripey binding finished it off easily and now this fun baby quilt is ready for Project Linus.


9 comments:

  1. Very clever idea. I've sewn tubes to make the scrappy trip around the world block but not for any other block. I'm going to file this technique away for later. Thanks for sharing.

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  2. I'm all for not matching seams, that does does look fast! Sweet panel quilt!

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  3. Hmmm, will definitely have to check out those videos! Cute finish! Have a wonderful, funderful day!

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  4. Thanks for the link. You are so smart to mark/make up your own "special ruler".

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  5. What a great YouTube channel! I do that same as you--piece together leftover strips or fat quarter strips to make one whole width strip. Cute, quick little baby quilt!

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  6. Thanks for the link to the tute and all her others, wow a ton of them! That should keep us busy for a while, LOL Great work you have been doing.

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  7. thats a great little block trick isn't it... love how you have used up pieces you have...
    Hugz

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  8. I didn't watch the video, but can attest to the speedy results of that method for making a strippy quilt!!

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  9. I will definitely be coming back to this post for that video; what a cool quilt. You could sew scrappy fabrics in strips of lights and darks even to create interesting patterns I'll bet. You need to link this up (please!) with my DrEAMi! linky party.
    http://www.mmmquilts.com/2017/10/dreami-linky-9.html

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