Variation on Double Take Quilt-Along

This weekend at the Austin Modern Quilt Guild Retreat held at the Wimberley Quilt Ranch, I finished piecing a variation on the Double Take Quilt -Along. Instead of using dark squares (Block B) throughout the top, I replaced every other row with dark stripes.

To modify the instructions for this:
1) Use 1 yd of dark fabric rather than 2/3 yd.
2) After making the long strips for Block B, simply cut the pieced strips into 6.5" pieces, until you get a total of 36 dark stripe blocks.
3) Cut 25 3.5" pieces in order to finish Block B and continue with the instructions for finishing Block B.
4) When assembling the quilt, simply follow the layout in the image shown.

Double Take Quilt-Along - Quilting

So your top is pieced, now you are wondering how the heck to quilt it. Another great thing about technology today is that you can try out different quilting options without ever having to sew a stitch, or more importantly, pick out stitches when you don't like it!

I decided to keep the quilting simple for this top design. And geometric. I love quilt patterns that are geometric. It must be the engineer in me.

First I looked at doing circles to contrast the hard edges of the top:

Click to see more detail!

These circles seemed too plain to me, so I tried out some larger ones that would over-lap each other:

Click to see more detail!

I like how that looks. Definitely a candidate. Next let's see what some straight lines would do for the top design:

Click to see more detail!

I definitely like the straight lines, but think maybe it needs a bit more quilting. Let's try one more:

Click to see more detail!

This is perfect. It complements the top design and also gives it a bit of a modern plaid feel. This is a pretty simple design that you can do on your domestic machine, but it is also an easy design to do on a longarm if you have access to one.

I chose to use white thread to quilt the top. For the batting, I decided to use a 100% cotton batting in white - white because much of the top (as well as my back) are white. I've found that some white fabrics, even though they are a good quality, cannot hide the natural color of non-bleached batting. Because I wanted the quilt to be a little thicker than usual, I used a thicker loft batting.

Here is the finished quilt:

I won't get into the details of how to bind the quilt. There is a great tutorial on perfect binding from award winning quilter Sharon Schamber. Check it out here! I follow her binding method on every quilt I make, including the part where she said to use washable glue! Trust me...it's worth it! Your binding will shine with the rest of the quilt.

Well, I hope you enjoyed quilting along with me. This has been a great experience. Again, thanks to Faith at Fresh Lemons for letting me use my design that came out of her Quilt Mock-up tutorial.

Now, time to finish up my blocks for her Summer Sampler Series !

Double Take Quilt-Along - Assembly

Now that you have all the blocks pieced, assembly is a breeze. The assembly of the quilt can be broken down into four rows:

For each row assembly, you just alternate the burgundy centered squares with the white centered squares paying attention to the orientation of the white centered squares as shown above. Make (4) of each ROW1, ROW2 and ROW3. Make only (3) of ROW4. If you followed my instructions for ironing the seams to one side (under the darkest fabric), you should find it easy, where required, to butt up the seams of the blocks:

When assembling each row, I matched the orientation of the burgundy centered blocks with the orientation of the white centered blocks:

Odd Rows

Even Rows

Always iron the seams towards the darker fabric, away from the white fabric.

When all the rows are assembled, sew them together ROW1, ROW2, ROW3, ROW4, ROW1, etc. until you have no rows left. Note that you should end with ROW3 since you only made (3) of ROW4. Your finished top should look like this:

Next week....quilting!

Double Take Quilt-Along - Cutting and Block Making

The beauty of this quilt design is that there are just two blocks. Better yet, both of the blocks are actually the same, just with different colors. Below are the instructions for cutting and piecing the blocks. NOTE: all seams are 1/4"; all sewing is right sides together.


Cutting

Block A

1) Pink: Cut (3) 6.5" strips by the width of the fabric. Then cut the strips into 2" pieces so you have a total of 60 pieces.
2) Magenta: Cut (3) 6.5" strips by the width of the fabric Then cut the strips into 2" pieces so you have a total of 60 pieces.
3) Green: Cut (10) 2" strips by the width of the fabric. Do not make any further cuts at this point.
4) White: Cut (5) 3.5" strips by the width of the fabric. Do not make any further cuts at this point.


Block B

1) White: Cut (6) 6.5" strips by the width of the fabric. Then cut the strips into 2" pieces so you have a total of 122 pieces.
2) White: Cut (12) 2" strips by the width of the fabric. Do not make any further cuts at this point.
3) Burgundy: Cut (6) 3.5" strips by the width of the fabric. Do not make any further cuts at this point



Making the Blocks

I am going to piece the blocks separately, so let's start with Block A:

1) Pull out your cut fabrics for this block. In my case, I will need the pink, magenta, green and white fabric.
2) Take (1) 2" strip of the green fabric and sew it to (1) 3.5" strip of the white fabric. Press seam towards the green side (so that the green seam is tucked under the green fabric and not exposed under the white). I like to press my seams to one side. I'm not a fan of pressing the seams open for various reasons.

3) Take another 2" strip of the green fabric and piece it to the other edge of the same 3.5" strip of white fabric. Again, press towards the green.

4) Continue to do this with the remaining 2" green and 3.5" white strips cut for Block A. You should have a total of 5 sewn green-white-green strips when complete.

5) Now, we are ready to cut these strips into the center pieces for the Block. Cut and discard the selvedge edge from each strip. Then cut 3.5" widths from the strips. Continue cutting until you have 60 green-white-green strips. Wasn't that easier than piecing each individually?

6) Now we are ready to complete the piecing of Block A with (1) 6.5" strip of magenta and (1) 6.5" strip of pink.

7) Sew the magenta strip to the green-white-green pieced center strip. I like to first pin the ends of the pieces together and then to ease in any excess by pinning in the center. Press towards the magenta strip.

8) Next sew the pink strip to the other edge of the green-white-green pieced center strip. Press towards the pink strip.

9) That's it! Your first completed Block A.

10) Continue piecing the magenta and pink strips onto the green-white-green center strips until you have 60 Block A.

Block B is done in a similar manner:

1) Pull out your cut fabrics for this block. In my case, I will need the white and burgundy fabric.
2) Take (1) 2" strip of the white fabric and sew it to (1) 3.5" strip of the burgundy fabric. Press seam towards the burgundy side (so that the burgundy seam is tucked under the green fabric and not exposed under the white).

3) Take another 2" strip of the white fabric and piece it to the other edge of the same 3.5" strip of burgundy fabric. Again, press towards the green.

4) Continue to do this with the remaining 2" white and 3.5" burgundy strips cut for Block A. You should have a total of 5 sewn white-burgundy-white strips when complete.


5) Now, we are ready to cut these strips into the center pieces for the Block. Cut and discard the selvedge edge from each strip. Then cut 3.5" widths from the strips. Continue cutting until you have 60 white-burgundy-white strips. Wasn't that easier than piecing each individually?

6) Now we are ready to complete the piecing of Block B with (2) 6.5" strips of white.

7) Sew the magenta strip to the white-burgundy-white pieced center strip. I like to first pin the ends of the pieces together and then to ease in any excess by pinning in the center. Press towards the white-burgundy-white pieced center strip.

8) Next sew the other white strip to the other edge of the white-burgundy-white pieced center strip. Again, Press towards the white-burgundy-white pieced center strip.

9) That's it! Your first completed Block B.

10) Continue piecing the white strips onto the white-burgundy-white center strips until you have 61 Block B.

That's it! Just two blocks. Now you are ready to start laying out the quilt top!

Feel free to post your progress on the Flickr site!

Double Take Quilt-Along - Fabric Selection

Color and Fabric Selection

I have to admit that one of my favorite parts of quilting is the planning! Picking out the fabric can sometimes be frustrating, but it's made a bit easier with software programs available these days that can let us preview the colors and fabric choices together with the quilt design we have in mind. I'll go through how I picked out the fabrics for this quilt. You do not have to follow the same strategy as I did, but I wanted to go through my train of thought for picking the colors and fabric.

For the quilt blocks in this particular design, I knew I would need four colors (plus white for the background). I started with two complimentary colors in mind. Complimentary colors are colors that are on the opposite sides of the color wheel. I chose a green/yellow and a magenta. Then I took the magenta, and picked two more colors from the same hue but with different values (value being the lightness and darkness of a color) - a pink and a deep burgundy. I finished it off with a white for the background color.

You can choose to use the same colors as I did, or pick your own. You don't even have to stick with complimentary colors. Some other options are split complimentary, analogous, even monotone. Just pick two colors and then vary the value on one of the colors to get two more. For my fabric, I chose to stick with solid colors, but you don't even have to do that - there are plenty of fabric lines out there these days that would work nicely for this design.

Once I had the fabric choices selected, I did a mock-up of the two different blocks. I used the light and medium values (pink, magenta, and green) for Block A and the deep value (deep burgundy) for Block B.

Once the blocks were complete, I did a mock-up of the overall design for the quilt.

As I mentioned, you can also choose to use patterned fabric as an alternative to solid colored fabric. These days, designers do a great job of putting out fabric lines that you can make a quilt exclusively out of. To see what a pattern option might look like, I picked out some fabrics from Sandy Gervais' Giddy line. One limitation to using patterned fabric from one collection is that the values may not vary as much as you'd like. The resulting quilt can be just as beautiful, but it may not have all the value changes you are looking for. You can see below there were basically two rather than three different values in the Giddy collection - just pink and red, but no burgundy. But I think the overall look is still beautiful!

Fabric Requirements

Here are the fabric requirements for the quilt top once the fabric selection is made. Keep in mind that this does not include the backing. The finished top will be 66" x 66".

Feel free to post your progress on the Flickr site!

Double Take Quilt-Along

Ok, I admit it, I'm a quilt-a-long addict. I guess I can add that to my blog header next to chai addict! What I really like about the quilt-a-long format is the discipline. Just ask my husband, I work best with deadlines. So when the quilt-a-long format came along, the engineer in me really responded to it. It's just like a project plan - a clear objective, resource allocation, weekly milestones. It was a match made in heaven. I've gotten so many quilt tops done with this format, I can hardly believe how productive I've become.

So when I finished my last quilt-a-long, I decided I wanted to try one of my own. So here we are.

The design for this quilt top was inspired by a Quilt Mockup Tutorial on Fresh Lemons. The tutorial talks about how to design a quilt using Photoshop Elements. I had previously been using another graphics program, but the software company decided to stop making it for the Mac and the VERY old version I owned couldn't keep up with my computer's operating system anymore. So I was very excited to learn how to use Photoshop Elements for quilt design. As I took the tutorial, I quickly realized there was a great quilt design in the blocks I was building, twisting, and turning. With permission from Faith at Fresh Lemons, I decided to use the quilt that came out of that tutorial for a quilt-a-long. Check-out the Fresh Lemons website for more inspiration and to take the Quilt Mockup Tutorial. Thanks, Faith!

I'm calling this design Double Take - amazingly, it is made out of only two quilt blocks! Quilt-a-long with me! Since this quilt is only made up of two blocks, it will take no time at all.

Posts

July 6: Fabric Selection

July 13: Cutting and Block Piecing

July 20: Assembly

July 27: Quilting

Feel free to post your progress on the Flickr site!