Do you have any afternoon plans?! If not, I think I can help :) Fall came in with a thud this week in the PNW, and I love it! I spent all my extra time at my sewing machine, and I didn’t feel even a little guilty about not getting any yard work done.
This week, I tackled yet another pile of scrap triangles that I have been saving. In this blog, Just Calm Down, that I wrote a few weeks ago, I said that I probably had 500 of these 3½” triangles. Well, I'm happy to say that number is greatly diminished now! I decided to pair these mostly black, gray, and white triangles with some small bits of Halloween-ish fabric to make a cute new scrap quilt.
First, I separated the triangles into a stack of whites and a stack of black/grays for contrast. Then, I paired four of them together, for each block, and built as many larger triangle units as I could out of what I had. (If you want to read more about this block assembly, you can follow what I did in that Just Stay Calm post from a few weeks ago.)
Here is my initial layout. At this point, I realized I had way more black/gray blocks than white ones.
I cut a 6½” strip from one of my cute Halloween background fabrics. Then, I cut the selvage end off and cut two wedge triangles from the end, by lining up the 6½” triangle line along the bottom edge of the strip and the left dashed center line down the left cut edge. Cut on the right side of the ruler, then rotate the ruler 180 degrees to make a full 6½” triangle cut. Keep rotating the ruler to get full triangle cuts. I ended up with nine full triangles and two half-wedge triangles. (I used the Large Creative Grids 60 Degree Diamond Ruler for this project.)
Here you can see the new layout! I spaced out those 6½” triangle cuts throughout to make up for the lack of white pieced triangle units. But, I still had fourteen open spaces.
This is where the fun started :) I cut 2½” strips of white, orange, and yellow. I ended up needing two strips of both the yellow and orange, but only one strip for the white.
First, I cut the white into fourteen 2½” triangles. Using the triangle lines on the ruler, align the 2½” line along the bottom edge and the flat tip at the top edge. Cut on both sides of the ruler, then rotate the ruler 180 degrees to make the next cut. Use the flat tip of the ruler to trim the outer tips off flat.
Then, I cut fourteen 4½” trapezoids from the two orange strips. I used two different shades of orange for this spot. Using the triangle lines on the ruler, align the 4½” line along the bottom edge and the 2” star burr markings at the top edge. Cut on both sides of the ruler, then rotate the ruler 180 degrees to make the next cut. Use the flat tip of the ruler to trim the outer tips off flat.
Finally, I cut fourteen 6½” trapezoids from the two yellow strips. Using the triangle lines on the ruler, align the 6½” line along the bottom edge and the 4” star burr markings at the top edge. Cut on both sides of the ruler, then rotate the ruler 180 degrees to make the next cut. Use the flat tip of the ruler to trim the outer tips off flat.
Here you can see my candy corn blocks laid out. I ran a little short on the yellow scraps I had, so I improvised with a couple of blocks that were two-tone orange and white. I really like those more monochromatic blocks in the quilt.
I sewed the three pieces together and pressed each seam open.
In the end, I had neat stacks of candy corn blocks with some variation from each other depending on which orange was used.
That was the touch this scrap quilt needed! Just look at how cute this is!
I started sewing the triangle blocks into horizontal rows. There’s quite a bit of shrink with all those seams. As you can see, the bottom rows are not sewn together yet. The quilt still came out to a nice lap/wall size at 39” x 43”.
Once the horizontal rows were sewn together, I sewed the rows to each other and pressed the whole thing out.
I used my typical straight-line quilting to fill up each triangle, and you can see from this photo of the back how it creates a diamond grid with the quilting.
I had just enough of that cute Halloween fabric to do the binding, and just like that, another pile of scraps was put to good use!
I'm so happy with how this turned out!
Happy Sunday everyone,
Krista
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