Quilty New Year's Resolutions, The Quilty Math Workbook, and What I Have in Store for 2016

Pretty much every year, my New Year's resolution is a variation of I’m not going to start any new craft projects until I finish all the ones I already started.

Every year I fail at keeping that resolution.

This year my resolution is to be way more strategic about the projects I do start.

Have a plan. Buy only the right amount of the right supplies. Stop spending money on supplies that I’m not going to use and stop having to figure out where and how to store those supplies I’m not going to use.

The Quilty Math Workbook is the key to figuring out exactly how much fabric and batting I need for each of my current and future quilt projects.

The Quilty Math Workbook consolidates all the information I previously had to look up over and over again for figuring out what size my quilt pieces need to be, how much seam allowance I need to add to each of those pieces, and how much yardage or how many fat quarters I need to be able to cut out all of those pieces.

It’s perfect for finishing current projects but calculating how much fabric I need for sashing and borders, what size batting I need to purchase for my quilt top, the most efficient way to piece together a backing and how much fabric I need to buy to do that, and how much fabric I need to purchase for binding.

It drives me crazy when I buy someone else’s pattern or find a lovely free pattern online and it doesn’t specify how much fabric I need to make the quilt. A couple years ago, before I created the Quilty Math Workbook, I asked a quilt designer how much fabric I needed to buy to make her sampler quilt that was designed to be made with scraps (which I just didn’t have enough of that I liked), I ended up buying more than twice the amount of fabric I needed. And I don’t really want to make two of that quilt. Especially considering I still haven’t finished the first one. The Quilty Math Workbook can be used to figure out how much fabric you need to buy for any geometric quilt pattern composed of squares, rectangles, and triangles in whatever number and combination of fabrics you can imagine.

The Quilty Math Workbook also has graph paper worksheets I created to help me think through the process of creating block designs, arranging those blocks into rows that I can sew together, and adding sashing and borders as desired.

I’ll also be using the Quilty Math Workbook to help me develop my next ebook.

Announcing my next product: The Half and Half Quilt Pattern + Ebook

My next product, which you can expect to be released in early 2016, is going to be all about half square triangles.

There are a few key points that make this not just your average half square triangle quilt pattern.

All of the half square triangle units I’ll be working with will be half white and half color + print. I can spend hours arranging my fabric into pairs to be sewn together but somehow I always get them mixed up myself or my toddler grabs a handful so he can “help”. If I always sew together white and color when making my half square triangle units, it’s really easy to get every single one right the first time.

I’ve culled through thousands of classic quilt blocks to select and adapt blocks to create a gallery of appealing designs that are composed exclusively of these easy to sew half square triangle units that are half white and half color. The gallery will include 130 of the prettiest block designs you can create with my half and half units and nothing else. They’ll all use the same units and same amount of fabric so it’s easy to pick and choose. It’s also easy to change your mind and keep going with your quilt.

In the spirit of using fabric as efficiently as possible so you’re not spending a lot of money on future scraps, the master pattern will be designed so you can quickly cut all of the pieces for your half square triangle blocks from fat quarters with minimal waste. After accounting for selvedges on your fat quarters, you’ll be using 94% of the fat quarters in your half square triangle units. 

Braided 9 Patch Design Process Tutorial

In this post, I'm going to show you step by step how I start with the Quilt Block Sketchbook to color in some simple squares and turn those squares into a complete quilt top design.

Step 1

Use the Quilt Block Sketchbook 9 Patch page to color in blocks. Each column is the same pattern. Background light blue stays the same. Pink, purple, and teal color placement rotates.

Step 2

Offset the columns. Column 1 stays in place, column 2 moves up one block length, column 3 moves up two block lengths.

Step 3

Take the blocks that extend beyond the first full row and move them to the empty spaces in the bottom rows.

Step 4

Collapse columns so there is no space between the blocks. Repeat the first row at the bottom.

Step 5

Add vertical sashing between each column. Repeat sashing as borders along the outside vertical edges.

Step 6

Add borders to the top and bottom.

Step 7

Remove black outlines to simulate finished quilt top.

Step 8

Use the Quilty Math Workbook to calculate the finished quilt size plus figure out exactly how much fabric you need to make this quilt.

Pin this tutorial!

Halloween Brick Quilt: Exactly how I designed it then and what I'd do differently now

A little over a year later, I'm almost done with my Halloween quilt. Let me walk you through exactly how I designed the quilt then and what I'd do differently now.

The Design Process Then

For this quilt, all I knew was I wanted to make something cute and Halloween themed.

So obviously, I picked out my fabric first.

The fabric I bought was a fat quarter bundle called Halloween Town by Doodlebug Designs for Riley Blake. This exact bundle is no longer available but you can find some very similar options here.

Next, I grabbed a pen and a big Post-it Note and started designing my quilt. (When I first looked back on this a year later it was total gibberish. Took some serious brain power to remember what these numbers meant. And that is why I created my Quilty Math Workbook.)

The goal was to use my fat quarter bundle to create the biggest quilt possible because I didn't want to have a lot of waste left over. In retrospect, that plan made problems down the line. My Quilty Math Workbook has reminders throughout to prevent those problems on future quilts.

A fat quarter measures about 22 inches wide by 18 inches tall. There's probably some selvedge on one of the 18 inch edges. How wide that selvedge is varies by manufacturer.

I figured my usable fabric on each fat quarter for this bundle was 21 x 17. That was a little too close, in the future I want to allow 2 inches to spare in each direction at a minimum.

I cut 8 bricks from each fat quarter.

21 / 2 = 10.5
17 / 4 = 4.25

Half an inch in each direction on each brick was allotted for seam allowance. 1/4 on each edge adds up to a 1/2 inch on the total width and total height of each brick.

Each finished brick measures 10 x 3.75.

If I can cut 8 bricks from each of 21 fat quarters, I have 8 * 21 = 168 bricks to work with.

I arranged my bricks 7 across by 24 down. I offset the bricks so I didn't have to match seams when sewing my rows together so I had half a brick hanging off each end, which I later cut off. That meant each row finished at 6.5 bricks wide.

To figure out how big my finished quilt would be, I did a little math:

6.5 (# of bricks across) x 10 (width of each finished brick) = 65 inches across
24 (# of bricks down) x 3.75 (height of each finished brick) = 90 inches long

A Twin size batting measures 93" x 72" so this seemed perfect at the time. In the future, I want to allow for more extra batting around my quilt top because it took me 3 tried to get my quilt top and batting to line up just right when I was basting.

Assembling the quilt top

I cut my fat quarters into 10.5 inch wide strips and then I cross cut those strips into 4.25 inch bricks.

People always ask me what that purple thing is. I get really bad carpal tunnel syndrome, especially when I'm cutting a ton of fabric so I use the Gypsy Gripper for a more ergonomic way to hold my ruler in place.

The Original Gypsy Gripper

$22.08

Buy on Amazon

Next, I sewed bricks into rows along their short edges. 7 bricks made a row. I kept an even 1/4 inch seam allowance using a patchwork foot with an attached guide.

After all my bricks were sewn into rows, I pressed my seams open.

Then I laid a few of my rows out on the floor so I could decide how I wanted to arrange them before I started sewing them together.

I pinned each new row on before sewing it on.

The beauty of a brick layout is that the seams of the next row go in the middle of the bricks of the last row so you don't have to match all the seams. I just aimed for the approximate middle. I start out pinning at the ends of the row and then do the middle of the row and then keep dividing the unpinned sections into about half until my whole row is pinned.

Sew the rows together. Make sure each row is offset half a brick at the end.

Keep pinning and sewing more rows. After I've pinned my row, I like to do an according type fold to get it into a little bundle that fits on my lap while I'm sitting at the sewing machine.

Repeat, repeat, repeat and eventually you'll have all your rows sewn together into a quilt top.

Press all the seams from sewing the rows together open.

I used a very small cutting mat that I normally use for scrapbooking so I could place it on top of my ironing board while I trimmed off all the excess half blocks at the ends of my rows.

Piecing the backing

I got some 60" wide Minky fabric to use for the backing. I needed to cut my Minky yardage it into two pieces and piece those together so the backing would be big enough. Simple enough.

Except the worst kind of user error happened. I sewed a right side to a wrong side.

I was so mad at myself this quilt went on time out. It got put in a storage bin and hidden away for a year. 

Finishing the quilt

October rolls around again so I decide maybe I'm not quite so mad at myself anymore and can finish this quilt now. I spent a lot of time with my seam ripper which is a pain in the butt on a fluffy fabric like Minky. Got the backing sorted out.

Sandwiching the quilt top, batting, and backing on this quilt was tricky. It took me three tries to get it right.

This could have been easier for me if my quilt top was a little smaller. If I used a bigger batting. If I worked in quilt as you go style pieces and then assembled those later. If I had more floor space to work with in my house. There are a million things about making this sandwich that were a hassle. Ugh. Glad that part is done. Ultimately I had to use wide blue masking tape to hold my backing taut. Then I spray basted each of my layers to the next. And then I pin basted everything.

I'm hand tying this quilt with black DMC size 5 perle cotton.

The main reason I decided to go the hand tying route is because this quilt is so big and bulky that it doesn't fit under the tiny arm of my Bernina 350PE (which is a 3/4 size machine).

The hand tying is still in process. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the quilt and doing a simple tie at each corner. I start at the top of the quilt and go through to the bottom and then back up to the top with a big tapestry needle. Then I tie a square knot which is like a double knot except that you need to do one of the knots with the opposite thread on top. Then I clip the tails so they are about half an inch long.

All I have left to do is finish the tying and put on a binding.