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UFO 3-Julie’s Fabrics
Mary H. is keeping up with the UFO Challenge and here is her’s for this month and is ready for the next one. I was tickled with the photo of her “next project.”
She says it was hand pieced in 1991 and has been patiently waiting for her attention. I have some that are at least that old too.Aren’t these clowns adorable?
I know I said that I would be unveiling the Alphabet Garden quilt setting. However, it still needs to be tweaked and I got behind because of updating my website, so I pulled this UFO out of one of my bins. I will be working on it as we go through the year because each piece needs to be cut individually. I don’t have the patience to do that all in one sitting!
This quilt is going to be made of fabrics from my quilting friend Julie who passed away six years ago from Lou Gehrig’s Disease or ALS. She made many beautiful quilts for her family. I was given some of her fabrics and a beautiful pair of scissors. Every time I use them I think of her.
I didn’t really look at the fabrics when I received them, just set them aside. There were several bags, each bag seemed to be coordinated by fabrics and some boxes of 3″ squares that she had carefully cut.
Another bag was pastel floral elongated triangles and black floral print squares and plain black squares. At first, I thought this was a project she had cut out and was going to put together, but the more I looked at all of these triangles, the more I realized these pieces were the remains of a quilt she had made. So the question became, how could I use them? I was not going to toss them. So I decided to make Half Square Triangles from them. Am I crazy? Each triangle and each square will have to be cut individually.
As I looked at the pastels, I realized that if I cut carefully, each elongated triangle would yield one 2-1/2″ half square triangle. Others would yield 2-1/2″ squares. So I thought of the Scrappy Escher Quilt, that I blogged about a few years ago. The tutorial for making the blocks is there.
First I cut the triangles, I could only get one Half Square Triangle from each scrap triangle.
Draw a line on the wrong side of the black square, layer the triangles on the right side, turned the unit over, pin through the two layers and sew it from the backside, you have to be careful when you put it under the foot, so you don’t mess up the corners of the triangles.
Some of the pastel triangles were large enough, that I could cut a square and a half square triangle.
I was even able to use the rectangle method for making some of the half square triangles, the light triangles were marked in that case, so it made it easier to sew. See more about HSTs from Rectangles at the Scrappy Escher Quilt.
Then all you do is fold it slightly and cut between the light triangles. Press the seam allowances to the dark fabric, then move on to the next set.
Here is what I have right now.
What I think is intriguing about this design is finding the block. Where is it?
Looking at it your eye is trying to tell you it is the one on the left or right. But it is not. It is these two blocks below. One is for the center and the other is for the edges. The block is given a quarter turn to bring the corners together.
And here is how it looks in Electric Quilt as a 68″x77″ quilt. I have a feeling it will be bigger, a lot bigger. Mmmm, maybe I should make two smaller quilts, that would work, too.
Click on the quilt for the EQ file.
I don’t know how large the quilt will be, but I plan to use all of those pastel triangles and the black floral to make the quilt or quilts. Here is the link to the pdf file for the blocks.
Click on the link below to take you to the page with the 2018 blocks.
2018 Block of the Month
Tags: ALS, Electric Quilt, Half Square Triangles, Lou Gehrig's Disease, machine piecing, machine quilting, Sewfasst
