Quit Maths - Triangles

Not everyone likes doing math and from time to time there can be a lot of it involved in making a quilt.  Anyone who has ever made a Triangle quilt and seen how much it shrinks in width when pieced, will appreciate the effort  Yvonne @ Quilting Jet Girl has gone to, to make a calculator specifically for equilateral triangles.  Check out Yvonne's post today and bookmark her page 'cause the next time you are making a triangle quilt this will come in handy!

You can download the spreadsheet and save it for a later date if you wish - thank you Yvonne for this!

Equilateral triangles are those where the internal angles are all 60 degrees and the three sides are all the same length.  Trigonometry gives equations for working out height when you know length and vice versa. When designing quilts these equations can be used to determine the width of your finished quilt and the number of triangles you need to cut.  After making a quilt that turned out smaller than expected I worked out an equation and kept in on hand in OneNote but Yvonnes spreadsheet now makes this so much easier!  And there are options for adding pieces to square your quilt or cut away at the ends.

During the Triangle- A-Long hosted by the Sassy Quilter we made 6" triangles cut from strips and it gave me a 58" quilt.  This turned out a lot smaller than I wanted but I wanted to keep my colouring and not change my design by adding more triangles.   What I could have done was made my triangles bigger.
I find it easiest  now when working with triangles to determine the height first as it is a really simple calculation in comparison to the width.  For equilateral triangles  the rule of thumb is to add 3/4" to the desired finished height of your triangle.  A 6" cut triangle gave me a 5 1/4" height per row and approximately 58" tall quilt.

Changing to 7" triangles would have given me almost a 69" quilt and a more usable width of nearly 58".

Yvonne's spreadsheet makes it so easy to play around with these figures and end up with a quilt the size you need!  I am hoping to use some of my Halloween fabric for a pointy triangle quilt next year and will definitely be coming back to this calculator again!

WIP Wednesday: Quilting Triangles!

Last Christmas, I bought myself a present.  I joined a weekly sewing group and wanted a smaller machine that I could carry.  My normal machine is a Husqvarna Viking and it weighs a ton.  I had a disk problem in my back a few years back and I am very wary of carrying heavy sewing machines!  So I settled on this little Pfaff Passport 2.0.

I love this for piecing and when I used it during a free motion quilting class at the Limerick Quilt Centre,  Mary Palmer was impressed with the tension on it.  My Husqvarna always requires a tension adjustment for FMQ and piecing but it does have a huge harp space (between needle and body of machine).  Little Pfaff not so much, but I thought I'd use it for my triangle quilt.

I discovered that when piecing triangles you lose a lot of width when the seam allowance is sewn in.  Not so much on height but it meant my triangle quilt was a bit smaller than I thought it would be.  Suits me being 5ft zero but probably not most people!

Small quilt, small machine, I decided to try and give it a go.  Plus the Pfaff has a built in walking foot (Pfaff call it IDT).  I love this feature.  You just pull down a black plastic arm at the back and even feeding of the fabric from top to bottom happens automatically!

When I first looked at quilting this, I thought straight line quilting beside the seams was a bit too obvious and then as it's been hanging along so long, I thought obvious is a perfectly fine strategy to pursue, so straight line it was.  I broke my 1/4" piecing foot accidentally (had moved the needle for a zipper foot and forgot to move it back!) so I used the standard foot instead and it gives a line about 3/8" away from the seam.

I turned on the new season of Scott & Bailey to watch (UK detective series) and straight lined away.  I know some people enjoy this bit and zone out.  I have to confess I find it a little bit boring though I really like the look.

Even straight line quilting I found it easier to move the quilt with quilting gloves.  I use Machingers size small.  They give you a guide on the back of the packet to place your hand to see what size you are.  My friend Louise was advised to go a size smaller again as they stretch after a while using them and I can attest to that.  I kept having to pull them up, so on the list to buy at the Knitting & Stitching show are XS gloves!

Things were going great across the long diagonals mirroring the triangles and I was tempted to stop there after two lines crossing over.  This would have left me 9" at the widest space between the quilt lines and my batting is good for up to 10" apart.  As this is probably going to be washed a lot, I went for the last line echoing the horizontal lines across the quilt.  At this point I got a few puckers - maybe three lines crossing over was a bit too many to chance my luck?

It only happened in the yellow fabrics which are from the Minimalista range.  They feel smoother to the touch than the other fabrics and I didn't pre-wash as these triangles were from fat eights that I had starched.  The Florence fabrics I used, despite not having perfect points everywhere, glided over smoothly.  I'm happy enough with the result and figure in the wash they might disappear!

I originally thought I'd use black for my binding but when I placed it next to the quilt it looked too harsh.  I'm thinking a darkish grey would work better.  This grey seems a little too blue so it looks like I need to make a trip to the quilt shop and see what I can get to finally finish this little quilt. 

You may have noticed I didn't do a round up of Quarter 3 FAL goals.  Well, that's because I didn't finish any!  I did come close with 2 projects but fell shy of the finish line.  So this post is in Work In progress Wednesday rather than Finish it Friday!  Oh well, there's always this quarter!

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WIP Wednesday: Back to the Penny Sampler!

So the Triangle top is finally finished and I was very good!  I didn't put it away like I normally do and flit to something else.  I made a quilt back out of this Tula Pink 5m fabric, from the Foxfields collection, that I bought here on Craftsy.  I really love this colour and the pattern is adorable.  So I pin basted it last Friday and it's ready to be quilted.

 Not quite in the quilting zone of mind just yet and facing a mostly empty design wall, I had the choice of piecing more London arrows or cracking on with Fat Quarter Fizz with an Oriental twist or hand sewing down some binding (my least favourite part of the quilting process!).  Of course the butterfly effect hit again and I didn't do any of that but decided instead to revisit my UFO's (unfinished objects!) 

I was feeling a little guilty that kids are back to school this week and summer is practically over and I haven't done that well on finishes for this quarter's Finish-A-Long.

I've got about 5 1/2 weeks to bust that list, (triangle being one I'm pretty much assured on) so I pulled out my Penny Sampler quilt from last year designed by Rachel from Stitched in Color. It's been on my list all year!

Maybe it was the trip to the zoo on my few days off last week with my little cousins, or maybe the chilly nights starting to draw in that prompted me to pull this one out.

I'm going for a wintery feel with this and not having finished it last year (Halloween sewing got in the way!) I'd really like to have the quilt top at least put together.  I'm very tempted to try hand quilting quite a bit of this one!

This was a project taught as part of a 3 month class on Applique, precise 1/4" piecing and Paper Piecing.  The design of the quilt is really different using a sampler approach to teach the three skills but also a broken border approach to contain the blocks which I really, really like!

There is a large outer border of diamonds that wraps around the quilt.  It's broken up by the inner border of crosses and a long filler block to showcase a favourite fabric. 1" squares are dotted about for a third broken border!

There are quite a few blocks and a lot of design elements to this one and I got as far as the applique and precise piecing last year.  So this week, I've been trying to catch up on the paper pieced blocks and some of those borders!

I think my favourite might just be the flower pot.  I did have a few problems joining the centre section on this one.  It's not quite as flat as it could be and I'll be attacking it with steam when it's sewn into the quilt top!  The coffee pot was easy and looks really big an dramatic in the quilt.  Kona Seafoam was used to try and balance the long hanging diamonds on the left as it is dominating the quilt at the moment,  and I need to balance it a bit better.  It is a really lovely shade though especially with the Kona Snow and Charcoal.  So I'll have to add a bit to the bottom diamond row to pull the eye away from the left a bit.  My new design wall makes these decisions so much easier and if I was to make this again I'd probably not put so much Seafoam in one place!

Of course this project being from last year, I had managed to lose the tea cup pattern that goes with the coffee pot!  There was an option to pay a few more dollars for an ebook at the end of the course which I didn't opt for, so I decided to try and make up a cup pattern in the style of Rachel's myself! 

Last month I bought EQ7 andrunning it on my Mac I had a few hiccups over a corrupted user but the support team at EQ7 were brilliant helping me get it sorted.  So Saturday, having the whole afternoon to myself and a working computer I gave it a go!  I have a new found respect for paper piecing designers! 

I spent ages trying to get the handle right so that the pattern would print in easy to put together sections.  EQ7 helps and gives you a warning saying that you have an inside corner - doesn't tell you where though!  In the end after much messing about, 2 cups of tea and quite a few rich tea biscuits I had an aha! moment.  

I opened the block library and searched for cups! Yes I know, I'm a dope!  I didn't find a cup but a basket handle which was perfect and I copied that.  The trick is to think in planes and straight lines.  Rachel's cup handle is a bit more rounded and much more elegant but I'm happy I got there in the end!  EQ7 gives you a blue outline when all is well, so nice to see after 3hrs messing around!

Of course when I printed the first one I forgot to hit reverse! So I now have two cups, facing in different directions!  That's ok too! It's my version of the quilt after all!

The last paper pieced block is this one called the Dala Horse - this horse is the reason I wanted to make this quilt in the first place.  When I saw him, I knew I had to make him and signed up straight away.  He's almost the last block in the whole quilt though so you have to work up to him!

Rachel has a new class on offer starting next week and there are still places left.  It's called angled and walks you through 5 quilt designs using triangles, diamonds and flying geese.  I've signed up (hoping to piece 1 of the 5 designs!) so will really have to get a move on to get the bottom row of diamonds done,  one more horse pieced, sketch stitch in the horse faces and assemble all these blocks together!  Luckily very few need sashing and I'm really looking forward to the assembly bit!

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I'm in the mood for Basting!

I think I'm obsessed with squares!  I have 3 quilt tops finished and they are all squares and rectangles, but it is nice to finally have some tops pieced and be getting a bit closer to some quilting.

Charm Pack Cherry (free pattern FatQuartershop)

Quilt for Mexico (Creative Quilting Pattern)

Bachelors Walk (own design with a little help from Claire!)

This one is the only one of my FAL 2014 Quarter 1 goals I have a hope of finishing so this weekend it's going under the needle!  That is after I've pressed and basted it first.  I don't think I have enough safety pins to baste 3 quilt tops so I'm going to try and spray baste this one and pin baste My Quilt for Mexico as even though I absolutely love the Charm Pack Cherry quilt it doesn't have a deadline to aim to and will have to come last on the list!

After this, I think it might be time for some triangles!   There is a Triangle Quilt-A-Long happening at the Sassy Quilter and I have a bundle of Denyse Schmidt Florence that I have no plans for and a 60 degree ruler I bought but never used so I think this is the project for it.  (And I've not forgotten about the 86 flying geese I have to make!)

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