I have been wanting to make a pixel heart quilt, a scrappy quilt, and an equilateral triangle quilt for a while now. I ultimately decided to combine the three and now I have my very own equilateral scrappy heart quilt! I painstakingly cut 3 small triangles out of 60% of my stash (in a particular colorway of course, I’m still too uptight to go too scrappy) and came up with the quilt below. I initially had an entirely different quilt in mind, but after playing on my design wall, decided this was the best option. I think it is my favorite quilt I’ve made! I still need to quilt it, but wanted to post it in time for Valentine’s Day. Here it is!!! Big thanks to my lil sis for holding it up for one of the photos. (Linking up to Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday)

The quilt ended up measuring around 50 inches by 60 inches. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to trim the top and bottom rows off to make the quilt square, or leave the jagged edges.

Are you ready to make one of your very own!?! First head on over to Fresh Lemons for her tutorial on cutting out equilateral triangles. My triangles started out as 4 inch strips, so the math even works out!

First up…How to piece the triangles together

Full disclosure: I am usually a press the seam to the side kinda gal. I personally think its easier to match points if they nest. That said, this quilt is far easier to make if you press your seams open. As long as you machine quilt the life out of it, after you are done the quilt should stand up fine over time. Before we look at how the whole quilt is constructed, let’s review how I pieced my triangles.

You are going to start off by placing two of your triangles together, right sides facing. Sew a quarter inch up one side.

Time to press! As I said before, I think its easier to sew these types of triangles together if you can use the corners of the pressed open seams as guides. Take a look at how the piece should look from the front and back:

Now that you have the seams pressed open, you will use those corners as guides. You are going to place the next triangle, right sides together, one on top of the other, just as before. Instead of worrying whether or not you’ve offset the triangle enough, use the openly pressed seam as your guide.

Voila! You have three triangles sewn together and you can keep adding on. I like chain piecing, so I will sew triangles together in sets of two, and then put sets together to make into sets of four, etc. Goes a lot faster that way!

Quilt Configuration

Okay, now that we know how to piece the triangles, let’s look at how the quilt actually pieces together. This quilt is made up of columns instead of rows. For my quilt I made 15 columns of 29 triangles each. Essentially you are sewing together rows of 29 triangles and then turning them on their side to form columns.

Sew your triangles together like this:

Then turn them on their side and line them up as columns like this:

Finally, sew together your rows and you have your quilt!

The Heart

The heart is made up of 14 triangles that span 4 of your rows/columns. Use the coloring diagram at the bottom of this post to figure out where you want to place your heart, and pay close attention as you piece!

The possibilities are endless!

Initially I started out wanting the triangles to be white, every other triangle, like the two options below (forgive the colors, these were quickly illustrated files). Ultimately the heart just wasn’t visible enough, which is how I ended up with the cascading triangles.

I’ve included a diagram below so you can color your own heart quilts and use them as a reference when piecing your triangles. I also came up with a couple of other fun colorways in Illustrator I thought I’d share. Here is a rainbow version:

My favorite is a gradient heart quilt. I think I might make this one and enter it in our local quilt show…if I do I’ll be sure to post pics!

Coloring Diagram 🙂  Just click on the picture and print! Hopefully it prints out properly on 8.5 x 11 inch paper.  Like with Water/Waves, I included more rows and columns just in case you want to make your version larger. You can also adjust the size of your triangles to make it bigger. 

I’ve been working on something this past week that I am so excited to post about! I just need to add two more columns to the quilt top and then I’ll be ready to post a full tutorial, pattern, and coloring sheet so you can make your very own versions! Stay tuned, it will 100% be happening this weekend. In the meantime, enjoy this sneak peek!

Well, its been months since I said I’d post a tutorial on this, and thanks to Erica prodding me, here it is! (Seriously, thank you, I might not have ever gotten around to it, it had slipped my  mind!).

What we are making:

For illustrative purposes we’ll work on a block that looks like this (in my current fave color combo):

CHOOSE FABRIC/CHARM SQUARES

I’m going to explain how to make this block from charm squares, or you can substitute fat quarters. If you make the block from charm squares you’ll need at least two sets of the same line. Each set usually has at least 2 of each print, and certain aspects of this block require 4 of each print.

For the block you’ll need a total of 11 charm squares, in 5 different prints/colorways, as seen below.

LET THE TRIMMING BEGIN!

Take the first 5 charm squares and trim them down from 5 inches squared to 4.5 inches squared. The outer edge of the pinking is where you should measure from.

Now, cut the next four charm squares in half to measure 2.5 inches by 5 inches (we’ll be trimming them again later after sewing).

Finally, take your last two charm squares and cut them in half twice, so that they are quartered and measure 2.5 inches square.

You should end up with the following pieces:

PIECE OUT MY FRIENDS!

Let’s work on the cross part of the block first, highlighted in yellow here:

Take each of your 2.5 x 5 inch strips and pair them with a strip of the opposite color. Sew 1/4 inch up the side and press toward the block that will be towards the center of the block, see diagram below.

The blocks above should end up measuring 4.5 inches by 5 inches…let’s trim them down to be 4.5 inches square.

We’re almost there! Now lets piece together the last four pieces of our nine-patch.

Don’t hate me, we are going to do these blocks the wasteful way. Take each of your 8 mini 2.5 inch squares and draw a line from one corner to the other (do this on all 8).

The lines you just drew will be the lines you sew on. Set-up your four remaining 4.5 squares as seen in the diagram below, this is an excellent place to start pinning. 🙂  Please note, the tiny squares WILL slightly overlap one another since they are 5 inch charms quartered and the square you are pinning them to is only 4.5 inches square.  Once you have them pinned, sew along the lines you just drew.

Now you are going to trim 1/4 inch outside the line you just sewed on each small square.

Press outward towards the corners of the smaller squares:

YAY! The 9 blocks are ready to piece together!

MAKE IT WORK

Now we are going to sew each of the three rows together. I had you press in certain directions so that the seams would nest together and not get too bulky. Go ahead and press the top and bottom row towards the center block of that row, and for the center row press out to the sides so that all three rows will ultimately nest together.

Now sew those rows together and you’ve got a block! The block is really very simple to make, I just wanted to be very detailed explaining it, don’t let it intimidate you!

This past August my little sister moved out of our folks house in Virginia and into my spare bedroom in Austin. I had been renting a 2 bedroom for myself and my craft addiction, but decided to cram as much of my craft stuff into my living room as possible until we can move into a house this April. My IKEA bookcases are now lined up behind my couch, and my sewing table doubles as a side table. So far we’re making it work but we are both looking forward to having more space soon!

My fabric shelves with extra storage up top:

My weird cat somehow managed to climb up a large pile of polar fleece I was storing in the corner cubby made by the bookcases:

My other weird cat took advantage of the empty shelf while I was reorganizing my fabric a couple weekends ago:

Anyhow, back in August I decided to make Ally a simple, modern quilt as a welcome to Texas present. I’d been wanting to play with solids and Denyse Schmidt’s Point Me quilt seemed like a good option. I stupidly asked her what colors she wanted (something I swore I wouldn’t do when I started this quilt endeavor) and wound up making the quilt green and grey. Green and Purple are two colors I gravitate away from, but I think it turned out nicely. The pic below is of it on my bed, because after Ally moved in she decided to get a single futon type bed until she gets more space. If I’d know this would have been twin sized, oh well!

It is a beautiful 75 degree January day here in Austin so I thought I’d take advantage of the weather and shoot some photos of finished quilts. I borrowed the Austin Modern Quilt Guild quilt stand (perk of being an officer) and setup shop in the field next to my apartment. I currently have three quilts I need photos of, so I hauled them downstairs along with my two dogs.

I am always on the lookout for photography tips, and with the help of the DSLR camera I have from work, I’d like to think I am not a complete novice at photography. I even know how to shoot in aperture priority, or manual if I really want to do some experimenting. So why is getting a great pic of a quilt so darn hard?! Today’s wind factor didn’t help my endeavor and I had to enlist my sister’s help in making sure the quilt stand didn’t fall over entirely. Note: Queen size quilts act as a sail when hanging from a quilt stand in even the lowest of wind conditions.

I managed to get a shot of my Cape Ann Charming Stars quilt that is okay enough to share. This is the second quilt I ever made, I started it a little over a year ago and it sat on a shelf for the better part of the year because I kept telling myself I was going to rent time on a long-arm and quilt it. I finally gave up on that idea and had it quilted by Jessica at Remnants, and it turned out awesome. I chose a seashell and starfish pattern and think it complements the beachy nature of the quilt. I used Moda Bakeshops Charming Stars tutorial. The quilt ended up being around twin size.

That’s all for now!

My contributions for tonight’s mug rug swap for the Austin Modern Quilt Guild.

When I first started quilting my goal was to never have more than 5 projects going at a time, in any given stage. The plan was to hold off on starting new projects until at least one was finished and off the list. It was a lofty goal, and it didn’t take me long to completely abandon the idea altogether. I can’t count the number of WIPs I have on my shelf, but I figure as long as I keep finishing SOME of them, why limit myself?

I finished binding my Gnome for the Holidays quilt this weekend and will post pics soon of the finished product. I have also been finishing up a few Christmas projects and decided to start working with my Winter’s Lane charm packs. I knew I wanted a scrappy quilt I can use in the winter, but I couldn’t decide on whether I wanted some structure, or totally scrappy. I devised a pattern based on a Farmer’s wife block that can be cut from charm packs, but quickly realized it would go WAY faster if I just used yardage or fat quarters, so I abandoned my Winter’s Lane for the moment to dive into a new bed size quilt made from my Baby Jane fat quarter bundle. Here is the first block I did with Winter’s Lane, before switching to Baby Jane:

As much as I love how it turned out, I knew it would also be striking with Baby Jane, and faster to piece using fat quarters versus charm squares. Ultimately I’m going to do a disappearing nine-patch with my Winter’s Lane (I even sewed up 10 or so blocks and sliced them up). Here are the Baby Jane blocks:

The block measures around 12inches and I’ll be posting a tutorial this week on how to make it either from fat quarters or charm packs. 🙂  UPDATE! Tutorial HERE. 🙂

Linking up to Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday!

I am taking advantage of not going “Gnome for the Holidays” this weekend to sew up a storm! I finished my Holiday Gnome top and hope to start quilting it this weekend. I’m thinking of doing a giant radiating circle similar to what I did for my owl quilt. I have plenty of the awesome red and white stripe fabric for the binding. Final quilt is around 50×62 inches. Short post today, gotta get quilting!

Also linking up to WIP Wednesday @ Freshly Pieced.