Ok, finally! Look what I have for you… a quick little tutorial on how to construct the scrappy triangle blocks I used in my Nautical quilt.

A few things before we start… this tutorial will show you my method for making a scrappy triangle block. I’m not providing fabric requirements, or instructions for fully completing this quilt, because well, I just don’t have time! and because I think there are many great tutorials already out there for finishing quilts. If you have questions about the block, leave them in the comments and I’ll answer them there. Feel free to use and share this tutorial, but please remember to give credit!

Block size: 6 1/2″ x 9″.

So, to start, you’ll want to make yourself a template for an isosceles triangle. You could really select any lengths you want, but here I’m going with a triangle that measures 6″ on the short side and 9″ on the two equal sides. (I marked lines on the left side to show the 6″ short side, then marked a vertical line 8.5″ away from the left side and a horizontal line at the halfway point of the short side. Use the point where those lines cross as the point of your triangle.)

Once you have your template cut out, you can start sewing together your scraps. I sewed most of mine together the following way because I think it results in less waste.

I find that 5-6 strips seem to work best for this size of triangle. You could use more if you wanted, but you should make sure that your first and last strips are wide enough so that you don’t lose the fabric in your seam allowance. Lay out your strips, overlapping them a bit to account for the seam allowance, to make a basic triangular shape.

Lay your template on top to make sure the scrap area is large enough.

Sew your strips together using a 1/4″ seam allowance and iron. I iron my seams open, but feel free to use your preferred method! Trim, using your template as a guide.

Cut a piece of your background fabric that measures approximately 6″ x 12″.

Align the long side of the background fabric with one of the long sides of the triangle. You’ll want to align it so that there is about 1.5″ of background fabric on either end of the long side of the triangle.

Sew along that edge and press. It’ll look something like this.

Align the short edge of the triangle with one of the vertical lines on your cutting mat and then make a horizontal cut through your background fabric approximately 1.25″ above the top of the short edge, as shown above (this doesn’t need to be exact, as we’ll be trimming it down later on).

You’ll have something that looks like this.

Take the background piece you just cut off and flip it around like so.

Flip it up so the right sides are together and sew along this long edge, again leaving about 1.5″ of the background fabric on either end of the triangle.

Trim off any excess beyond the seam

Press this seam. You’ll have something that looks like this.

Trim the top and bottom sides so the height measures 6.5″. I aim for about 1/2″ of background fabric above and below the short edge of the scrappy triangle. Trim the sides so the block measures 9″ in length.

And ta da! One scrappy triangle block! Make a whole bunch more, arrange them how you’d like, and sew them together into a lovely quilt top! As always, if you make any, I’d love to see them, so be sure to add them to the FITF Flickr group!

First, a quick drawing showing the measurements (for those of you who want to skip the rest of the tutorial!) -

This block is a great one for using fat quarters, and I think it works best with non-directional prints, since the blocks end up turned in many different directions when you put together the quilt top. For my Innocent Crush quilt, I used fat quarters of 11 different prints (all the prints from the Charmed palette).

To start, square up the long edge of one of your fat quarters and cut a strip 3.25″ wide. You’ll want to cut this strip along the long side of the fat quarter, which means you’ll have a length of approximately 22″. Cut a strip of solid white (or your solid of choice) that’s 1.5″ wide and the same length as your printed strip (in this case, about 22″).

Sew the white strip to the long side of the printed fabric and iron.

Cut this strip into 7″ pieces. You’ll get 3 pieces from each strip.

Repeat with your other printed fabrics. Additionally, cut a second strip from each printed fabric that’s also 3.25″ wide (3.25″ x 22″). Subcut into 3.25″ squares. While you’re at it, cut additional strips of white fabric 1.5″ wide by 3.25″ in length.

Select two printed squares and sew together with a white strip separating them. Iron seams.

Sew this section to your rectangular section and iron your seam. Your block will measure 7″ square.

Make as many additional blocks as you’d like for your desired quilt size and lay them out to your liking, alternating the block orientation to create your desired design. Add sashing between the blocks and admire your lovely new quilt top! (sashing between my blocks measures 1.5″ in width)

As always, let me know if you have any questions, and if you make a quilt or quilt blocks from this tutorial, please consider adding your photos to the FITF Flickr group!

So… remember this quilt? It’s still not finished, but I’ve had a number of requests for a tutorial, so I decided to put a quick one together for you today.

You might recall that I originally made my Flying Farfalle quilt using this technique, which was inspired by an image in Gwen Marston’s Liberated Quiltmaking II book. For my second quilt, I decided to change it up just a little bit, adding in a thin little strip of white to offset the bright colored points from the coal background.

I’m calling it Dinner Date because the coal background reminds me of a men’s suit with the pops of color as a fun tie.

So, to start, collect your materials…

For this quilt, I’m using Kona Coal as the background. I’ve decided to go with 6.5″ squares for this one, but you should feel free to switch it up as you’d like – rectangles, larger squares… whatever works for you! Along with your background fabric, you’ll need fabric for the points – I’m using up some of my colored solid scraps. The size doesn’t really matter, though I think it works best if you use a longer strip that’s at least 2″ wide. If you decide to include the thin white strip, you’ll also need some white fabric. My white fabric is 1″ wide.

Sew the 1″ wide white strip to the long side of your solid strip (1/4″ seams) and press. (I press my seams open, but feel free to do whatever works best for you).

I wanted my white strip to finish at 3/8″, so after sewing the white strip to the colored solid, I trimmed it back to 5/8″.

In order to sew the colored points to your solid background square, flip the colored strip over and position it along one of the corners, as shown in the photo above. (You will end up flipping the colored section back over that gray triangle after sewing your seam, so just make sure that the colored portion will adequately cover the background triangle.) I like my triangle points to be wonky, so I vary the angles when sewing the colored portion to the background fabric.

Sew along the edge of the white strip.

Repeat for the opposite corner, using another of your colored strips. Iron the points and you’ll have something that looks a little like the photo above.

And the back will look a little like this.

Using your background square as a guide, trim off the excess fabric along all sides of the square.

Since your colored fabric has now become the points of the square, you can trim off the excess background fabric that’s under the colored point. Just trim along the edge of the white fabric.

And voila! A finished block! Make several more and you can start to see the fun pattern when you put them together!

As always, let me know if there are any questions, and if you make a quilt like this one, be sure to add it to the FITF Flickr group!

(Please keep in mind that this is just a quick little tutorial to show you how I constructed the blocks for my modified bento box quilt. There are tutorials you can purchase for the standard bento box quilt – I’ve never seen the pattern, and I really have no idea how the blocks are constructed in the pattern. I’m led to believe that this is not the same method, so I feel ok posting it here…)

The measurements provided are what I used for my quilt, but the technique would be the same if you decided to change the size of your strips, or the final size of your blocks. Using this method you’ll construct large blocks which you’ll then cut into quarters. These measurements produce a block that is 16″ square (or 15.5″ square, if you’re like me and aren’t as precise!) which is then cut into four blocks that are 8″ square (or 7.75″ in my case!) Please note that 1/4″ seam allowances are used.

All that being said, let’s get started! First off, select a bunch of fabrics you’d like to use. I probably used around 10-15 prints and about 5 solids for my version, but this is totally up to you!

Select a fabric for the center of your block and cut this to 6″ square. Then select the fabric for the second ring of the square. This fabric will be cut to 1 1/2″ wide. You need 2 pieces 1.5″ x 6″ and 2 pieces 1.5″ x 8″.

Sew the shorter strips to the opposite sides of the square. Press. (I press mine to one side, but you could certainly press your seams open if you’d rather). Repeat this process for the second set of opposing strips. Press again.

The next ring is 2″ wide, and for this ring you’ll need 2 strips that are 2″ x 8″ and 2 strips that are 2″ x 11″. Repeat the process to sew the shorter strips to opposing sides, and press. Repeat with the next set of opposing strips.

The third ring is 1.25″ wide, and for this ring you’ll need 2 strips that are 1.25″ x 11″ and 2 that are 1.25″ x 12.5″. Repeat steps from above.

The last ring is 2.25″ wide. For this one you’ll need 2 strips 2.25″ x 12.5″ and 2 that are 2.25 x 16″.

In theory, this should result in a block that is 16″ square. (this assumes that you have perfect 1/4″ seams and that your ironing skills are spot on!). In reality, my blocks always ended up just shy of 16″ square, so instead of worrying about it, I opted to trim them down to 15.5″ square. I just eyeballed it and trimmed a bit from each side, but in order to make sure everything lines up correctly, you’ll should mark the center of the block and measure out 7.75″ from the center on each side and use this as a trim line.

Once your block is square, you can simply cut it into four equal pieces. In my example, with a 15.5″ block, I measured in 7.75″ and cut the block in half and then repeated for the other side.

You’ll now have four equal blocks that are 7.75″ square. (or 8″ square if your sewing and ironing skills are better than mine!)

Repeat the process for constructing these blocks, changing up your fabrics and the placements of those fabrics and then rearrange the quarter squares into full blocks.

Sew your blocks back together, and then sew all the large blocks together into a quilt top! For the quilt I made, I made a total of 12 full blocks, which resulted in a smallish quilt, measuring about 40″ x 54″ after washing.

Enjoy! And as always, feel free to comment with any questions or if you spot any errors!

Oh, and an aside – I made this block for the tutorial, but don’t have any plans for it… if anyone’s interested in these 4 quarter blocks, leave a comment. If more than one person is interested, I’ll let random.org pick someone tomorrow!

Edited to add: The winner has been selected – Congrats to Jessica Brown!

A few new market bags for a local shop -

And the start of a new quilt -

Many many thanks to Julie and Joree for sending me some of the wonderful paint-by-number bird fabric. I’ve been hoarding it for a while, but now, in my attempt to actually use my favorite fabrics, I cut into them for this new quilt. I’m doing some more improv blocks and each center will feature one of the birds in one of the three colors. I really like each block individually, though I’m a bit concerned about how they’ll all work together in a quilt. We shall see!

And now, a quick tutorial – I had a few requests for a tutorial on making this type of quilt, so I figured I’d oblige (it’s the least I can do, right?). This shows the paper piecing method, which is my preferred method.

To start, you’ll want to decide on the size of your blocks. For the Kaleidoscope quilt, my blocks were 11″ square. In this tutorial, I’m using 7″ square blocks. I use cheap copy paper, but you could use anything you have on hand – I’ve heard pages from phone books work! – just as long as it’s not a heavyweight paper.

Cut squares of your desired size from the copy paper and set aside.

Decide on your fabrics and cut strips of a variety of widths. I cut strips of 1″ – 2.5″. I like the way it looks with a variety of widths, but you could also cut strips all the same width if you’d prefer. Set these aside.

I wanted to have a small strip of white separate the squares in my quilt, so I cut 1″ strips of a solid white fabric. You could opt for any other solid color – I used green in this baby quilt, or you could use one patterned fabric to tie everything together, or you could skip it completely.

Next we’ll temporarily attach the white strips to the paper squares. With the fabric right side up, lay the strip diagonally on the block. I use a little glue from a glue stick to dab on the back of the fabric strip so it will stick to the paper. You want to make sure that each strip is centered on the diagonal so that your strips will line up with you sew the blocks together. I eyeball mine (’cause I’m lazy!) but you may want to use a ruler and draw a pencil line through the diagonal to help with placement.

Now you can start sewing on your fabric strips! The first strip should be long enough to cover the section of paper right next to the piece glued on the diagonal. You’ll lay your first strip right side down on top of the strip glued to the block.

(please ignore my wrinkly fabric! I’m not much for ironing!)

Align the edges and sew with a 1/4″ seam allowance. Very important: be sure to reduce your stitch length! This will allow you to easily remove the paper from the back later. My machine is typically set at 2.5 – I’ve found that reducing it to 1.5 works well.

Sew along this edge (right through the paper), then iron open with a dry iron. (some may want to skip the ironing, and just finger press – that’s up to you).

Repeat this process, aligning another strip to the strip you just attached, again, right sides together.

Iron open and repeat until you’ve covered the entire paper square. It will look something like this.

Now you can flip the square over so you can see the paper square on the back. Using your clear ruler and rotary cutter, trim the excess fabric, using the paper square as a guide.

And now you’ve completed your first block! I leave the paper on my blocks until I have them all completed.

Repeat for all your paper squares. Then you can arrange them as you like -

When you have your blocks completed, you’ll want to remove the paper from the back. If you’ve reduced the stitch length, the paper should appear almost perferated. I fold the paper along the stitch line and then tear away.

Sew your blocks together and admire your lovely quilt top!

I tried to get a curved look without actually making curves. This block is large – about 17″ square.

For the second block, I did give the curved piecing a try, with less than perfect results, as you’ll see below. I would have redone it to get a better circle, but I was afraid of running out of fabric, so I stuck with the original one. I’m hoping it’ll just add to the wonkiness (hopefully!).

This one is about 15″ square. I hope you like them Kristen!

You’ll see those incorporated into the red/aqua block I made. I added in just a touch of green and yellow for a little bit of extra color and interest.

And then because I had so many pink scraps out from recent projects, I did up an orange/pink block as well.

Jacquie is doing such a great job putting together the charity quilts and I can’t wait to see these blocks incorporated into one of those quilts. Take a look here to see some of the lovely tops that have already been completed. Thanks for all your hard work Jacquie!

p.s. I’ve been really enjoying your comments recently. Sometimes I laugh out loud, and at those times I’m glad that there’s no one near me who might find that behavior kind of crazy! Several of you have asked questions also, and as much as I’d like to answer them all personally, I realize that I’m just not that organized. I think I’m going to blame it on gmail – so many of those comments that I know I want to answer seem to get lost in my inbox (I’m sure there’s a better way of organizing my email… just haven’t figured it out yet!). In any case, this is to let you know that I’ll try to answer all comments in the comment section of that post, so if you’ve asked one, please check there for the answer!

We’ve been using some very old potholders for a long time now. In reality, they were never meant to be potholders. They were actually used as examples of quilts you could order from a local store. While they did have batting between two pieces of fabric, they really weren’t very useful as potholders – thin batting led to hot hands when pulling something out of the oven!

In any case, I’m not sure why it took me so long to make new ones. For these I continued with the rainbow hues and pulled several fabrics of one color for each potholder. I made quick log cabin blocks for each front, a piece of corresponding fabric for the backing and whatever leftover fabric for binding.

This was a good project for using up fabric scraps, and also a great way to use up my leftover batting. Each time I make a quilt I’m left with strips of batting – not large enough for another quilt, but large enough that I don’t feel I can throw it away. I used two layers of batting for each potholder and did some simple straight quilting on each.

And I’m pleased to report… no burnt hands!