Early Blossoms featuring Contours from P&B Textiles
60” x 24”
Designed by Heidi Pridemore
60” x 24”
Designed by Heidi Pridemore
Happy New Year! At the
studio, we are getting back into the swing of things after a lovely couple of
weeks of family and friends. If your home is like ours, it looks a bit bare
after taking down the holiday decorations, though it is too soon for the bright
spring décor I love to put out. So for this month’s project, I designed a soft
runner to decorate the table and add a touch of color our dining room.
This runner features blocks
made from the Go! Hunter Star die. This die makes this challenging block a
breeze to make. We made this runner using the AccuQuilt Go! Big Electric Fabric Cutter and Contours fabric from P&B Textiles.
This month’s featured dies are
the GO! Triangles in Square- 4”
(finished) (55409), GO! Hunter Star- 6” (finished) (55166) and GO! Quarter Square Triangles-4” (55047). The
pattern for Early Blossoms is now available at our website for download here. The pattern will have all instructions to make this Contemporary
Runner.
If you are like me and
working in a very small studio, you may not have the room to keep your Go!
Electric Cutter out all the time. So I do plan a couple of projects and cut
them at the same time. This month I was cutting the Early Blossoms runner and
felt pincushion kits. I was pleasantly surprised how well felt cut on the Go!
Electric Cutter. I was able to cut four layers of felt at a time.
Now back to this month’s
project, I have always loved the look of the Hunter Star, but never been a big
fan of cutting by hand the diamonds needed for this block. So when they showed
mw this die, I jumped at the chance to make a project with it. To add some
interest to the outer border I used the Go! Half-Square Triangle 4” finished.
One thing to about this
quilt is that all the pieces have bias edges. So be careful not to stretch or
distort the pieces as you work. Here are some tips for working with bias edges.
First, starch and press your fabric before cutting, this will add some
stiffness to the fabric and makes it easier to work with. Second when pressing
your pieces, do so lightly and do not starch while pressing your pieces this
will also help keep down the distortion.
For the blocks, to mix it up a bit, I make the
dark star points with a teal dot fabric and the main dark print with the Multi
Flowers. So when you cut Fabric A, you will only need the larger triangle and
long Trapezoid as shown here. By switching out the points and adding a third
color, it added a contemporary feel to a block that is normally shown in two
colors.
When die-cutting the fabrics
for the half-square triangle units, before cutting, I layered the dark fabric
right sides together with the light fabric. By doing this extra step the pieces
are already sandwiched together and ready to sew, once die cut. If you do all
the lights together and then all the darks together, you have to take the time
to pair up the pieces. Now for a runner, this is a small time saver but on
larger projects this can definitely move things along.
When layering the small
diamond on the long Trapezoid, be aware that there is a wrong and right way to
line up these pieces. In the image above, the top example shows the wrong way
to layer these two pieces and the bottom image is the correct way to layer the
pieces. The beauty of these shapes are that you can jut flip over the diamond
shape to correct this issue. You do not need to worry about this issue when die
cutting the shapes.
I also wanted to share with
you a few photos of assembling the triangle unit. It is all explained in the
pattern, but sometimes it is easier to see it put together in photos. The die
cut shapes have these lovely slanted ends that makes aligning the pieces a
breeze. Really that is half the battle when piecing diamonds.
Once you have the two halves
made, sew them together to make one unit as shown in the first image above.
Once you have four units, you are ready to sew the block together. I found very
helpful to piece the halves together to make sure the center point lines up
correctly.
And here
is the finished runner top ready for quilting! This is my first project for
2016 completed! I hope they are all go together as easily as this one did. As
we move forward with this year’s Accuquilt projects, I would love to hear what
type of projects you would love to see us make. Please leave me a comment below
with your idea and I will randomly draw a winner
to win a pattern from our website on 2/1/16.
Make sure to visit my blog
each month where I will share with you some tips and tricks on cutting and
assembling of the project of the month along with posting the free pattern on
our website www.TheWhimsicalWorkshop.com You can also see our pattern and post at www.accuquilt.com
Until
next time…..
Heidi
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