What’s on the Design Wall – Page 7

Pre-cuts Wrangling!?!?! What does she mean? Has she been sniffing her fabric glue sticks (normally used for appliqué, not as recreational substances)?

“Pre-cuts” = Those addicting beautifully coordinated collections of pre-cut fabrics in common sizes such as 2 1/1 inch strips, 2 1/2 inch squares, 5 inch squares (aka “charm squares”), 10 inch squares, fat quarter (18 x 22 inch sections of fabric) bundles, and various other tempting configuations.

Wrangling = “To tend or round up” (Dictionary.com)

I have a lot of precuts, more than I need. Likely more than any human needs. I appear to use them to decorate my crafting studio.

Decided to do something crazy – actually USE them instead of just decorate with them!

In my post What’s on the Design Wall: Rediscovering my Charms I discuss delving into my charm pack (5 inch squares) collections and using them to make quilts and wallhangings. Taking a break from charm packs, I have moved to a smaller size of pre-cut – the 2 1/1 inch square pack. I wrangled up my collection of 2 1/2 square pre-cut packs and selected several colorful Rowan/Westminster Fabric packs to create a series of “16 patch” blocks to turn into a quilt. I pieced the 16 patch blocks into a scrappy “postage stamp” style quilt.

I provide some very general simple directions for wrangling your 2 1/2 inch pre-cut packs into a scrappy quilt below the photos.

2 1/2 Pre-Cut Quick Quilt (Wrangle & Design As You Go)

Wrangle a couple packs of 2 1/2 squares (approximately 42 squares in each pre-cut pack) – I think I used 2 or 3 to start
Chain piece non matching pairs of the squares – you will end up with a series of 2 patches
Chain piece the pairs (2 patches) to another set of pairs (2 patches) – you will end up with a series of 4 patches
Chain piece the 4 patches to another 4 patch – you will end up with a series of 8 patches
Chain piece the 8 patches to another 8 patch and finally you will have a series of 16 patch blocks
You can be careful and match your seams, and press between each patch construction or throw caution to the wind and not press until you complete the 16 patch
Sew the 16 patch blocks into rows and then the rows together in to a quilt top
Wrangle and Design As You Go – you might discover you need another 2 1/2 pack to get the size of quilt you want or you might have to save some 8 patches and use them on the side or bottom of the quilt to even out the rows. I used my design wall to decide what block “mathematical configuration” to use. I started with 4 x 7 (4 blocks in a row, 7 rows) but that seemed too narrow. I finally decided on a 5 x 6 quilt (5 blocks in a row, 6 rows of 5 blocks) and will take the row of blocks off the bottom of the design wall, add a couple more and add 1 additional block to each row.

If you are a new quilter or a future quilter and are unfamiliar with how to “chain piece”, check out numerous free online instruction videos available on YouTube or other sources.

Fabric Scraps Obsession, Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What’s on the Design Wall: “Log Jamming”

March 21, 2015October 22, 2018 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

A couple of weeks ago I was scheduled to take a quilting class called “Log Jam“. Log Jam is an innovative way to rapidly create scrappy log cabin quilt blocks. If you are a new quilter or not a quilter, a “log cabin” block is a quilting block made by starting with a small center square and building consistent standardly sized strips of fabric around the center square. The log jam concept throws the requirement of consistency sized strips out the window. “Log jamming” makes the log cabin style quilt block construction process laid back, casual, scrappy and fun! When making a log jam quilt you can use a specific palette of scraps, solid colors, or random scraps to make the piece very scrappy.

Unfortunately only three people registered for the class (myself and two of my friends) and it this did not meet the threshold to hold the class. The quilt shop was so wonderful and let us use their classroom anyway and hold our own class (two of my friends had taken the class before). So we spent 6 hours having a blast “log jamming“. The “log jam” method involves the kind of quilt block making you can do while chatting and giggling with friends – it is fun and less structured. We ended up being very silly and singing songs while we were working on our log jams. I even modified Bob Marley’s song “Jamming” to “Log Jamming”!

Now the 27 blocks I made log jamming are sitting on my design wall. I am trying to decide what I want to do with these blocks: maybe a table runner for my series of my Modern Quilt Table Runners on my Etsy shop or maybe one quilt with the blocks set into a solid background or floated. Every quilter should find space for a design wall – it helps to lay your pieces out to see where you want to take them!

If you live in the Central Oregon area, the Stitchin’ Post has a wonderful Log Jam class that my friends and I highly recommend you take!

Studio, What's on the Design Wall

What’s on the Design Wall: Rediscovering My “Charms”

March 1, 2015July 13, 2016 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

If you would like to see what is on my design wall in regards to new pieces for The Wardrobe Meets the Wall Collection, check out the post In Progress on The Wardrobe Meets the Wall blog. To stay up to date on Sassy the highly opinionated miniature schnauzer’s check out her page Schnauzer Snips.

CHARM PACKS

If you are quilter you know exactly what I am talking about – those addicting little charm packs. If you are not a quilter – charm packs are collections of precut 5 x 5 in. squares in coordinating fabrics. They are a great way to sample a new fabric collection – they usually come in packs of 40 squares and have at least one of each fabric in a collection. They can also come in solid fabric collections.

I fortunately or unfortunately have acquired quite a stash of charm packs over the years.

You go into a quilt shop and see a new fabric collection and daydream of a yard of each of the new 20 fabrics. Then you remember you need to eat and keep a roof over your head so you don’t give into the temptation of such a glorious shopping spree. Walking away from the collection you were coveting, you spy over in the corner the charm packs sets for the new fabric collection! You now think – “Yes! I can have a taste of the new collection (and still be able to pay my mortgage)!”

You bring them home, with no particular plans in mind for them and put them with the rest of your impulse buy charm packs…

A year ago I decided to stop hoarding charm packs and to actually use them. There are many wonderful books with charm pack specific patterns – patterns designed to start with 5 in. squares and go from there. I made a couple quilts from these pattern books, but quickly burned out of this structured traditional quilt making. So I put the rest of the charm packs back in their display (gather dust) area and forgot them.

I was reorganizing my fabric a week ago and came across my stash of charm packs again and thought: Why do I have to use a pattern? Why can’t I just do something initiative and “modern quilting” style? So I took two charm packs of collections of various solid color batik fabrics and randomly sliced each 5 x 5 in. square into three sections. Then I reassembled this huge pile of charm pack sections into random columns. I experimented and sliced up one of the columns to make thinner columns and alternated the columns.

I am still experimenting and plan to create table runners out of these columns. Below are photos of “playtime” on my my design wall.