Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Lazy Girl quilt top is finished

I'm taking a day off to baste a quilt so there'll be no post tomorrow!

My Lazy Girl quilt top is now put together. The quit that inspired it was Denyse Schmidt's Single Girl quilt. I came across a tutorial for an improvisational version of the quilt and it was called Lazy Girl quilt. I tweaked the instructions in the tutorial to suit my methods. Denyse's pattern has circles that are pushed out to the corners so that they are slightly "squared". I opted to go with round circles however I've got loads of scraps left so another quilt might be in my future. In my original pattern that I drafted the circles had 1" of background between each circle but I decided to reduce the block size so that the circles are touching rather than floating. I think it is more effective.


I didn't trim the blocks before sewing them together. Instead what I did was mark a pencil line 3/4" away from the edge on the wrong side and it became the sewing line. Once the seam was stitched I trimmed the excess fabric from that seam with scissors and pressed the seam open. I did not trim the seam allowance on the four outside edges of the quilt top. The beauty of this method is that I didn't have to mark the sewing line on each side of every block. Instead what I did was mark the bottom edge of each block in rows one, two and three. On all four rows I marked the sewing line on the right side of the first and second block. In this diagram I use pink to show you which blocks had the seam allowances drawn on the wrong side of the block.


I pinned the blocks in rows, stitched them, trimmed the seam allowances and pressed them open. I then pinned the rows together, stitched them, trimmed the seam allowances and pressed them open. It was much faster this way than trimming each block with the rotary cutter.

There are lots of lovely spaces for quilting and I've been doodling away like crazy! I'm not sure which quilt I'll quilt next - maybe this one or maybe another one! I'll see what tickles my fancy when I'm ready to start basting.

I thought I would share a few more quilt pictures from the show yesterday.

This is an old quilt made of every imaginable fabric including crimpolene!

Very fresh! A really nice way to use half square triangles.

 
A real show stopper made of tiny hourglass blocks
 

  
 
 
 
Until I post again, happy sewing!

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