Steady Progress!

Sunflowers at last!!

We've had to beat off the rabbits and the deer, but we were finally able to harvest a small bouquet for the dining room table!!

Since finishing my Smorgasblocks Sampler last weekend, I've been focused on painting woodwork (boring but necessary) while listening to a new book on Hoopla -- Jane of Austin by Hillary Manton Lodge -- it's the plot from Jane Austin's Sense and Sensibility set in modern times.

Harry (the indoor black cat) has been my companion.

This lump is Harry -- I did not realize that he was so fond of burrowing into the perfect napping spot?

My rewards for making painting progress have been slipping away to bird a nearby park (can't miss fall migration) or spending time in the studio working on assembling these two quilts for my grandchildren.

I decided on sashing these blocks with the background fabric to set each of them off.

I thought I would share how I handle sashing -- not sure why I started taking this approach?

Did someone teach me this? 

Mary Ellen Hopkins perhaps? 

Or one of my It's Okay teaching pals?

I add the sashing to blocks before doing any assembly of rows -- it makes for much less matching!

After being sure all the blocks are uniform in size, I add a plain sashing strip to one side of all the blocks in the quilt.  Doesn't matter which side, but must be the same for all the blocks.

Here I've added it to the right side.

I pressed the seams towards the sashing.

Then I add a cornerstone to one end of another batch of the sashing strips.

You can see one of the pineapple blocks at the back of the picture -- they are my current "sew-offs" as I need just three more blocks to finish another top.

I pressed these seams towards the sashing.

Those sashing/cornerstone pairs are now added to all the blocks -- once again, which edge doesn't matter except that it's the same side for all the blocks.

I pressed the seams for the  two outside vertical rows of blocks towards the sashing and the center row towards the blocks.

(The paper in the center of her forehead reminds me where she belongs in the layout.)

The final step to preparing the blocks is to add sashing and cornerstones around two of the outer edges.  One of them will have a cornerstone on each end.

For this layout, the left edge and the upper edge blocks will get one more pair so they are sashed on three sides.

The upper left corner is the only block that will be sashed on all four sides.

Here are all the blocks with sashing and cornerstones attached ready to be assembled into rows and the completed quilt top -- my task for this weekend!

The tops will be 44" by 58" and the verdict is still out on borders.  Borders will frame the tops nicely but may also make the quilts larger than I intended.

Auditioning will yield a verdict.

Harry emerged from his cocoon in time for supper but is back down for a long afternoon nap!

Perhaps we all need a bit of a nap this weekend!

Mary

The blocks are from Lorna's most recent sew along at sewfreshquilts.blogspot.com 

Sashed Quilt Settings -- Construction

To finish this series on working with sashing for setting quilt blocks together I want to share my construction approach.  I haven't seen this approach in any books but that doesn't mean there aren't other quilters using it.  It's an extension of a setting technique which Mary Ellen Hopkins taught me in the 1980's called "twosy-foursy".   She encouraged her students to set blocks together in clusters rather than rows as a way to get a quilt top that was truer to square. 

Somewhere along the way, I began to adapt this idea to sashing blocks.  Instead of creating rows of blocks that alternate with sashing to attach to rows of sashing and cornerstones, I add a sashing unit to two adjacent edges of my blocks with the cornerstone.  I like this technique because I can do all that before laying the blocks out so there are fewer trips back and forth to the work wall.  Plus I can continue to chain piece which always makes me feel so efficient.

This photo is from my pattern, Trip to the Stars, (available in my Etsy shop, MaryHueyQuilts) which I wrote to use Marti Michell's Sashing Stars Set.  It enables you to trim the sashing and cut the star points for a basic star (as illustrated) and also for a long pointed star in 3 different sizes -- for 2" wide, 3" wide, and 4" wide sashing -- any length!  It's a very versatile and handy tool!!

I begin by adding a sashing unit to one edge of each block -- in this photo, I've already added them to the left side of my train print squares -- I chain pieced!!

Snip them apart and press all of them. 

Next I sew the cornerstone to one end of another stack of sashing units -- chain-piecing again. 

Snip those apart and press them so the seam will oppose the seam on the sashing/block unit. 

Finally, stitch a sashing/cornerstone unit to an adjacent side of each sashing/block unit.  Still chain-piecing.  These are going onto the top edge of each square in this photo.

Snip these apart and press the final seam -- I press half the units to the left and half to the right. 

Now I'm ready to put the quilt up on the work wall.  Once the arrangement suits me, I will need to add sashing and cornerstones to the block units along one side and the lower edge of the quilt.

Once that is done, I'm ready to set the quilt together, add the borders and quilt!

This is my grandson, Bennett's quilt -- it was fun to make because I got to use lots of my orange stash!

Next week, I'll begin a series on Adapting Quilt Patterns.  We all own lots of those I imagine and I'm going to look at ways to get more out of a pattern than just what appears on the cover!

Keep piecing!!

Mary Huey



Sashed Quilt Settings -- Pieced Sashing

 I collect setting ideas and so I'm delighted to discover Pinterest as a vehicle for keeping track of some good ones!!  Many unique settings feature pieced sashing -- it's a lot more work but it can take a simple block and add another element of design to a quilt.  So today I'm featuring 3 quilts that I've made recently with pieced sashing.

 

These big scrappy string stars (each star is about 22" square) came from the home of my husband's paternal grandmother.  They lived on her shelves for quite a long time and they lived on my shelves for over 30 years.  There are 12 blocks and I've made them into identical quilts for my 3 children. 

 

 I had to add the background triangles and squares so made them larger than necessary so I could square all the blocks up without losing any points.  The sashing was inspired by a small antique quilt I saw on e-bay.  I pieced the sashing from my "sourdough" box of 2 1/2" strips and squares.  The squares were sewn together in pairs (as leaders and enders, Bonnie Hunter style) and then into the sashing units -- 12 pairs long -- and that was too long for my star blocks.  So it had to be 11 pairs and the stars blocks were trimmed to 22 1/2" AFTER the sashing units were finished -- so I guess you could say I backed into the math.

 

 

Interesting thing about the string pieced stars -- as I looked closely at them while reworking them, I realized the fabric was much earlier than the 1930's and 40's when Grandma Huey might have been sewing.  Was she using her mother's scrap bag?  Or were the blocks perhaps made by her mother or mother-in-law?  No one will ever know.  But it will be a nice piece of family history for each of my children to own.

This is a close-up of one of the blocks from the top I showed off a couple weeks ago.  The source of the rail fence sashing idea is a mystery to me.  There was another plan for these blocks --  but that was over 10 years ago and if there were notes, they were long lost.

There was a pile of blue blocks and a pile of blue and yellow rail fence blocks in the box and no memory of the original plan.  Two of the blue blocks were bordered with blue strips.  The plan to use the rail fence blocks evolved as things went up on my work wall. 

As I set the rail fence blocks into groups of 4, I discovered that I needed to "organize" them carefully to maintain an alternation of horizontal and vertical rails.    Again, the blue bordered blocks were trimmed to fit the sashing units AFTER I had sewn groups of 4 together. 




First plan for these applique blocks was to use one fabric for the sashing but when I started to audition  fabrics, I did not like the plain strips  -- and a row of squares pieced together looked clunky, too.  So the answer was triangles!  Trouble was that I couldn't organize the design of their layout, so I took a random approach, used squares for cornerstones and kept the value of the blues and greens fairly close so none would stand out too much.  There was quite a bit of "math puttering" to find just the right size for triangles that would fit around the blocks but once again I trimmed the blocks after the sashing was pieced.

Generally, the pieced units used for sashing are simple such as the 3 I've illustrated.  Flying geese are another good one for sashing as they add movement to a quilt.   This is a quilt one of student/friends displayed in a recent quilt show -- since the log cabin blocks are not very trimmable, the math for the sashing would need to be figured and tested to be sure everything fit.

And with most pieced sashing, the size of the individual pieced units will determine the width of the sashing. 

One of my favorite all-time books about settings for quilts is Sharyn Craig's Setting Solutions.  It has been out of print but sometimes you can find copies on Amazon or e-bay (be prepared to pay a healthy price) but there is also now a Kindle edition. 

So start to pay attention to sashing, save the ideas you like and start to apply them to your quilts.  If you'd like to check out my Pinterest board, it's call "sashing ideas".

Next week, I'll share some construction ideas with you pertaining to sashing!

Piece on!!
Mary Huey
www.maryhueyquilts.com

 

Sashed Quilt Settings -- Designing and planning

When you look at a quilt -- hanging in a show, featured in a magazine, or included on a Pinterest board -- what aspect of it catches your eye?  Is it the color, or the block design.  Perhaps it the fabric style.  For me, it's the setting -- edge-to-edge, sashed, straight or on-point and all the other myriad of possibilities.  More than imitating the exact design of a quilt, I'm looking for setting ideas to use in the quilts I design. 

So I'm going to start this tutorial series about Sashed Quilt Settings by looking at design options. 

To design the sashing for a quilt, I use a combination of drafting it out in Electric Quilt and auditioning on my design wall.  I can't visual the impact it will have on the blocks so I have to "mock" it up so my mind can see it physically.

The simplest strategy is to frame up the blocks -- the most important decisions one needs to make when doing this is what color to use and how wide to make the sashing.  This is one of my teaching sample for set-in piecing (y-seams) with 8-pointed stars.  I used Marti Michell's 2 1/2" Stripper Set for this version.

 

The quickest way to make these decisions is auditioning. Get out all the colors you are considering.  Put all of them on your work wall and lay some blocks on top of each of them.  Leave the room and come back later.  When you look at the quilt, pay attention to what your mind says!  When given several options, it will almost always eliminate one or two possibilities at the first glance.  I find this approach of "elimination" gets me to a decision faster.  Since I'm usually trying to work out of my stash, I'm more concerned with finding the best option that I already own than I am with finding "the perfect" fabric.  Nothing disrupts my momentum faster than the quest for "perfect".

Once you've settled on the color, now you can audition for the best width -- again, I encourage you to audition several options at the same time.  It always gets me to a final decision faster than putting up one option, taking it down, putting up another option -- frankly, my brain can't compare two things when it can only see one.

There are other times when I want to "float" the blocks.  This means the sashing will match or blend with the background fabric of the blocks.  I do this for one of two reasons.  I want to focus attention on the design of the blocks.  And often, it allows me to create a secondary design in the quilt.

The quilt below is one of my teaching samples for Marti Michell's Multi-size Kite Ruler.  The Rolling Kite blocks I made are quite large - 17" square -- so it only takes six to make a twin size quilt!!  When I laid out the blocks in Electric Quilt, I didn't like the blob created by the large corner triangles coming together.  When I separated them with sashing, I noticed that adding a cornerstone created a secondary block (the Shoo-fly) block.  I liked it!  The only thing left to determine was the width of the sashing and how to expand it into the final border

.

Here's another example.  This is one of my students' renderings of my pattern, Trip to the Stars.  The stars in this setting were created as I set the blocks together with sashing that matched the background fabrics of the blocks.  I used Marti Michell's Sashing Stars Set which allowed me to add two different style points to my sashing.  I wish I had space here to post all my students' versions of this easy quilt!

 

 

Next week I'll continue to explore Sashed Quilt Settings with a look at pieced sashing units.  In the meantime, think about setting up a Pinterest board for sashing ideas!!

 

 

Mary Huey