Friday, October 30, 2015

An Autumn Flimsy

I bought the fabrics in this table runner last month. I had a vague idea about how I wanted to use them; it was so vague I don't remember what it was. I was in Pa. helping my daughter in law after their move and we visited a quilt shop about a block or so from their apartment.

The striped border fabric caught my eye and I bought a yard of it and then picked out 4 fat quarters to go with it.

I have not shopped yet for fabric for the wall hanging I want to make and I don't have the yardage requirements figured out yet. I decided to use this fabric to make a test piece to determine how large I want the blocks. I also wanted to see how easy or difficult 9 Patch diamond blocks would be to work with. I strip pieced these and it went together easily. The flimsy is about 16 x 34. I cut my strips 2 inches wide and offset them about 1/2 inch to reduce waste. I cut 2 inch slices from the strip set by using the 60 degree line on my long 6 x 24 ruler. I did pin at the intersections when I made the 9 patch blocks and sewed the blocks together. I was really surprised that all my intersections came together with points that are as close to perfect as they can be.(I hate to say they are perfect but if they are not I can't tell.) Still this is only 7 blocks the wall hanging has about 74, although not all of them will be 9 patches. That doesn't include all the 60 degree triangles around the perimeter. That will be a lot of intersections.
Maybe I should make my strips a bit larger; I'm not sure that will save me much work. I am not going to rush into this without giving it some more thought. I don't want to come up short on the fabric if I change my mind about the size of the components.  I've been there and done that and it was troublesome enough when I could jump in the car and run over to the local quilt shop in 5 minutes.

1 comment:

Annie said...

That is a cool stripe, Ruthie. Before reading I thought you pieced the striped border wonky style. I was so impressed. LoL And the colors are wonderful for Fall. Those intersections look fabulous to me!