SQ QAL - Weeks 4 & 5 More Blocks & Removing the Paper

Alright everyone, it's week 4.  I know a  couple of you are following along, a couple are a little behind and some of you had been meaning to join but haven't yet.  Given the varying stage everyone is in, this post is a reminder that these blocks go quickly once you get the technique and the first couple down.  I consider myself an experienced paper-piecer and I knocked these out over a weekend. I've scheduled two more weeks for the new piecers and those with less time and that is this week and next.

Please check in and let me know how you are doing and if you have any questions. You can post here or on our FLICKR group.

Just to keep you motivated, after the next 2 weeks, we will have a 6th week for borders (if you are doing an Easter Table Runner and would like border instructions earlier, please let me know that and I'll email them. It's nothing difficult.) and then a week or two for quilting.  A prize will be given to one of the people who have posted a completed top and post pictures of it after the border instructions so let's get going, folks!

The prize: (it's still a surprise! Saturday I'm taking a bus trip up to PA with one of the local quilt groups and I'll be picking up the prize there when I go to Burkholder Fabrics. All I will say, again, is it's going to be stash friendly!)

(This step is optional but I find it helps tear away from the stitching just ever so slightly.) Give all those blocks a quick press with the iron. Fabric side up, paper side down. Start in the center of the block and quickly pass a hot (no steam) iron out to the corners and edges. Always work center out. Each block should take no more than 5 seconds to press the seams.  That's all we want here. If your paper curls up slightly at the corners, no worries, just bear in mind all we want to do is a quick set on the seams. 

Let's get to the removal of the paper.  No video for this one folks.  I can't see the need but if you do, I'll make one, just let me know. With paper side up, fold the paper back on the sewn line on the easiest section to tear off, section 8. Crease the fold then gently pull the paper off. 

Work your way around the block doing this from the outside in on all sections. Sometimes you need to gently tug the paper out from under the stitching and if you do, be sure to pull to the side, not up and away from the stitching to prevent pulling the stitching out. 

Lastly, sometime you have little pieces stuck under the stitch and in the corners.  A sharp pair of tweezers is the key here. 

Pull out those little paper hangers with the tweezers. I find this task is best with a garbage can by my side and the television or radio on.

So, for anyone that wants to jump in here are the previous posts/instructions.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3 -with video tutorials

and our FLICKR group. 

Feel free to grab my button on the sidebar if you want.

Cheers!
Beck

SQ Paper-piece QAL - Week 3 (with video!)

(NOTE:  I just realized that for week 2 I talk about this being a 9x9" square and it's not! It finishes at 9.5"x9.5". Please translate whenever you read 9" that I meant 9.5x9.5. My apologies. To those that have already printed and enlarged their patterns, it's OKAY to finish this out using 9x9 inch squares. It just means more leftover fabric instead of not enough. I'm sorry for the inconvience.)

If you haven't grabbed your materials yet, there's still plenty of time, get your stuff and join it! There will be a surprise for one participant along the way.

Ah yes, it's time! I'm doing this 2 ways, with the written word and with a very amateur set of videos.

I'm apologizing in advance for the videos. I started with just me and the camera, then my son J decided to help by moving the camera for us but in the process, instead of keeping it just to my hands, he shows you that I'm wearing my pajamas!  So, in essence, my early morning effort to get this done and posted today has been found out.  We've shown you all my penguin pajama bottoms and old Army PT shirt. Sorry about that but I wasn't about to redo the video.

Okay so here is the VIDEO Tutorial Part 1. This shows how to start and put sections 1 and 2 together.

1) You take fabric for section 1 and put it right side together with the fabric for section 2 and line up the edges. Place them on your cutting board with side 1 on top and side 2 on your cutting board.

2) Place the pattern right side down over the fabric so the fabric for section 1 is under the actual section 1 and positiong the line that is between section 1 & 2 about 1/4" in from the edge of the fabric.  Be sure that each section line is also set approximately 1/4" inside the edge of the fabric. Pin in place.

3) Reduce your stitch length. For use with tracing paper, my stich length is reduced from 2.5 to 2.0.  For stitching with regular printer paper, I reduce the stitch size to 1.5.  (This helps keep stitches from being pulled when we tear the paper off.)

See these next steps in the VIDEO TUTORIAL Part 2.

4) Start stitching on the line between sections 1 and 2. Put paper up and fabric on the bottom. Go from the one end of the line to the other end and do not stitch over. However, take one backstitch at the beginning and end to help lock it in place.

5) Remove from machine, flip paper over and with fabric on top, finger press fabric pieces open.

6) Flip again and with fabric on bottom and opened up, carefully fold the paper along the line between section 2 and section 3. Using a ruler, cut 1/4 AWAY from the folded edge.  Discard extra fabric for use in another project.

7) Flip. Place right side of fabric for section 3 along side the cut edge of fabric 2. Pin in place.

8) Repeat steps 4-7 for each section. Be sure to follow the numbers.  After section 6, do not cut. 

See these next steps in the VIDEO TUTORIAL Part 3.

9) Go to section 7 and trim the fabric 1/4" away from the line for section 1 and section 7.  Then sew on section 7.

   

10) Next fold and trim along the line for section 8, sew, finger press open.  Flip one last time and trip around the quarter edge of each edge line.

 Make 4 blocks this week.  Be sure to post pictures of your blocks on our Flickr Group!   Questions can be answered here or through the discussion board on the Flickr Group, as well. If you post them there, others, besides me can also answer. :)

Cheers! Beck

Favorite Things Friday (again)

So Ms. Pyjamas hosts this wonderful FTF and you have to know, it's a great way to meet new bloggers and to enjoy a little bit of fun insight shared by others. Take a look and link on up with your own favorite thing.  You can't go wrong.

In thinking about this week's FTF, I had a few random quilt-related FTFs and then I would see some great food commercial and I thought about comfort food and doing a mosaic of it for you. I decided I'd spare us all that until next week and this week, I'd focus on a few quilt-related favorites.  They are small items but are no less important than any one large favorite.  So, without fanfare and without many pictures (okay, any pictures) here are my things.


It is a favorite thing when I am sewing and my machine gets louder and louder and louder.

It is a favorite thing when I run out of the color of thread I'm quilting with and I only have about 10 inches of quilting space left to fill.

It is a favorite thing when I don't plan ahead, cannot find a proper binding, there's a snowstorm outside and I promised the quilt would be in the mail yesterday.

It is a favorite thing when I start 16 projects and never finish one.  It's really great for this slightly-OCD person.

It is a favorite thing the quilt starts so pretty in my head and looks like crap when it's put together.

It is a favorite thing when I don't have time to blog like I want to.

It is a favorite thing when I don't have time to quilt like I want to.

It is a favorite thing...

when I get to say Happy April Fool's Day.

Cheers! Beck

Paper Piece QAL - Week 2

ETA:
ACK! I just realized in the post below I talk about this being a 9x9" square and it's not! It finishes at 9.5"x9.5".  Please translate that when you read 9" below.  My apologies. To those that have already printed and enlarged their patterns, it's OKAY to finish this out using 9x9 inch squares. It just means more leftover fabric instead of not enough.  I'm sorry for the inconvience.

I'm sorry this post is a couple days late. With it being quarter end at work and March Madness here, I lost 2 days of the week to other stuff.

This week: Pattern preparation and cutting.  Say it with me, "yea!"

Preparing the Pattern:
1) Pring this pattern.  Use THIS LINK, not the picture below (and disregard the "A" in front of the letters, it means nothing).  I've set it up so if you print both pages at your normal printer settings (for normal 8.5"x11" paper), it should come out to look like each sheet pictured in the link.  You may have to "download" it first but it should still print as 2 pages. 

For my friends using A4 paper (thanks for asking Shevy!) I am not sure how to advise you the best way to print. There is another link below, a JPEG of the entire block but it prints (for me) as a 6"x6" square instead of 9"x9".  Here's the JPEG link.

UPDATE: Ms Pyjamas of Australia states she printed this and it came out at 6.75".  She then enlarged it by 31% and it came out to be 9" blocks.   Just get it as close to 9" as possible without going over too much and make all your blocks the same size and this will still work out with fabric requirements.

Once you print, fold one side on the line and tape the folded part to the matching line on the other sheet.  THEN MEASURE IT, please.  Each block should print up at 9"x9" with both sheets.

2) Put the block under one piece of tracing paper and using a ruler, trace all lines onto tracing paper (including the block outline). Add the numbers to the sections on your tracing paper.

3)  Now, you can repeat step 2 for all other pieces of tracing paper (if I have a 4-block quilt, I'll do that but if I have a 35 block quilt, I follow the following approach) or you can line up about 6 - 8 pieces of tracing paper ("TP" now b/c I'm tired of typing it) and pin them together securely.  Then, with the thread OUT of the sewing machine, use the needle to punch lines through all layers of the paper to create perforated line patterns on the other TP pieces.  If you have a machine that yells at you when you are trying to work without thread (like mine) the other alternative is to use the tool below and do the same thing, puncture each TP piece. However, you can only do 3 or 4 at a time with this method. 

If your eyesight is poor, I recommend following direction # 2 above. 

The last alternative, print the # of blocks you need from the printer. I only use this occasionally b/c (a) it's thicker paper and makes tearing away more difficult and (b) it uses a lot of  paper and ink.

4) Once all sections are marked with perforated lines or actual, drawn lines, be sure to number them all.  Pay attention and be sure you don't accidently turn blocks upside down before numbering.   Set aside. 

Cutting the fabric:

NOTE 1: Since there are so many options, I'm not breaking cutting down by each quilt. I'm giving you the cutting requirements for each block. You determine how many pieces you need by the # of sections in each block x the number of blocks with that color scheme. In one version, I have 3 yellow blocks.  3 yellow blocks times 2 sections of the medium, dark yellow = 6 med., dark yellow pieces total.

NOTE 2:  Reminder, once we are done, there will be waste from the fabric cuts. This can be reduced with PP practice but because we have newbies, I want to be sure struggling with angling fabric is NOT part of this QAL. Plan to pass your scraps to a friend who likes applique if you don't applique yourself.  That's the best advise I can offer.

A) Cut fabric for sections as listed below.

Section 3 = 5 1/2" x 10"

Section 8 = 5 1/2" x 10"

Sections 1 & 5 = 4 1/4 x 8 1/4"

Sections 2 & 4 = 4 1/4 x 8 1/4"
Sections 6 & 7 = 4 1/4 x 8 1/4"

Examples of cut sections for my yellow blocks.

B) You can cut borders now if you don't already have them cut and (please refer to week 1 post for the measurements you need) but I always wait until the end to cut those. I tend to measure better.

That's it for this week, folks. Next week, we will begin piecing. I will post every Monday from here on out! Let me know if you have any questions and please remember to post progress on our Flickr group. :-)


Cheers!

Beck

Progress on the quilt to Japan

I've decided to name this quilt, "Flowers for Japan" because, as it turns out, that's what it is in fabric and spirit.

This came together as quickly as I thought it would. I started Saturday, at about noon, with this.

Thanks to my Go cutter, 2.5" strips were cut in an hour. (Let me preface the rest of this post now by saying the top plus border could have been completed in one day if I started Sat. morning like I intended and didn't get stuck with my eyes glued to March Madness basketball games.)

Strips were put together in sets of 6 and sewn.

The set width ended up measuring at 11.5" so I cut them at 11.5" to make square blocks.

I ended up with stragglers. I have 3" cuts here and may or may not use them as a pieced border. I'm still deciding.

Currently, this is the top. As I said, a border (or two) will be added today and then probably a simple meander quilting & machine binding tomorrow so I can get this in the mail this week.

On a side note, I received the new Keepsake Quilting catalog in the mail and there is the picture of this quilt kit:

I laughed and the hubs agreed that in this household, that was a quilt for me, not him. I'm the chips & dip, sports, hotdog/hamburg, person and he likes more traditional quilts.  An hour or so later, it was confirmed when I laid out the Flowers for Japan and he commented he really liked the colors and look of that quilt. A lot.

Sometimes, life is funny that way.
Cheers! Beck