Eight Carat Quilt Along Part 3 - The Finishing!

I think it’s confession time. Even though life sometimes gets in the way of piecing, where I really get stuck in the quilt-making process is the actual quilting. I don’t know that I’d go so far to say that I get paralyzed by fear, but it’s pretty darn close. Because of this, my quilt top was completed a month ago.

Even though some of my points are a little cut off, I’m really in love with the way it came out. I’m glad I was able to use fabric from a previous Sew Sampler Box. The Triangles on a Roll made half square triangles super easy and It’s Sew Emma/Fat Quarter Shop always have easy to follow instructions.

Over the years I’ve spent many hours crawling around on the floor pinning my quilt sandwiches together. And I’ve hated every one of those minutes. I recently decided to give 505 Basting Spray a try and I’ve found I’ve been SO MUCH happier with the results. I make sure to use it sparingly and so far, I’ve been pretty happy with the results.

Before I moved on to the quilting I did a little bit of research. I thought I would use my walking foot because I’m still not super happy with my free motion quilting. (It’s tough wanting to be perfect at something that really does require practice.) I found a Leah Day machine quilting design called matrix and I thought it might look neat with the star. So, I attached my walking foot, stuck my supreme slider on my machine/extension table and promptly got disappointed.

My machine is a Janome DC2011. It’s a great machine for what it is and it has served me well over the last 8 years, but it does not have the most generous throat space. This means I have to do a lot of pushing, shoving, and fighting when I’m quilting. It’s definitely a workout! I have a dream machine and hopefully in the next year I’ll be able to afford it, but for now, I have to work with what I have.

Anyway, I used the seam ripper on my attempt and walked out of the room for a bit. What would I do? I didn’t want to ruin the quilt having just spent all the time assembling it. What to do…what to do? Then I had a light bulb moment and remembered that I have all of Angela Walters quilting rulers (my machine is also not REALLY designed for these, but I’m making do). I picked up Elvira and started making some wavy lines.

Even with the ruler, my quilting isn’t PERFECT, but it’s definitely better! As Angela says, “Finished is better than perfect!” I’m not going to be entering the finished project in any contests, but I do like the overall look. I was pretty happy to finish the quilting and get the binding on. I didn’t have any Aurafil (my preferred thread) that matched, so I had to grab some older Coats & Clark from the collection.

Here it is finished! This is before it took its bath in the washing machine. I think I did a pretty good job not making too many wrinkles in the quilting. There are a few, but once it was washed, you can’t really spot them.

And here it is washed and photographed in the bright sun. The backing is just a solid FreeSpirit Fabrics color that coordinates with the Tula Pink collection.

Project Details
Finished Size: 60” x 60”
Pattern: Eight Carat Quilt from Fat Quarter Shop
Fabric: Tula Pink Spirit Animal; Moda Bella Solids; FreeSpirit Fabrics Designer Solids
Batting: Happy Cloud 80/20 Silky Batting

Eight Carat Quilt Along Part 2 - Where the planning pays off

As I shared in my last post on the Eight Carat Quilt from Fat Quarter Shop I made some pretty big plans for my project, and then I had to pivot. When I was first planning this project I wanted to use my V & Co Ombre Confetti Metallic that I had in my stash. I remembered it being fat quarters. It turns out, they were 5” x width of fabric cuts. This was NOT going to work for my plan, so into the stash I dove. I came up with the Tula Pink Spirit Animal fat quarters from a previous Fat Quarter Shop Sew Sampler. I figured I could modify the plan I had already painstakingly created and use this fabric collection instead.

What was so painstaking about my planning? Well, you see, I couldn’t just put my half square triangles willy-nilly. No, I had a vision of an exploding gradient, of sorts. So, I set out with my colored pens and a ruler. Would this have been WAY easier with graph paper? Yup, it sure would have, but I didn’t have time to create that. Instead I figured out how I could sketch it out, including how to sketch the difference between the 4” finished squares section in the middle Sapphire block and the 3” finished squares of the Jade block. Again, it probably would’ve been much easier with graph paper, but I’ve never been known to make things easier on myself. Here’s my sketch:

As you can see, I ended up counting how many half square triangles I would need in each color. Looking at the graph, I have no clue what the 10s I put in the corners meant, but apparently it meant something to me at the time.

So, I set out with my 3” finished It’s So Emma Triangles on a Roll and got to stacking, sewing, and cutting. Overall, I’m really very pleased with how my half square triangles turned out. I’ve done it the “regular” way without the paper a number of times and it works just fine, but the paper adds just that little bit of help that means you can speed through the sewing just a touch faster. When you don’t have a ton of time to work on your hobbies because work and life take up more time that you want them to, it’s nice to be able to shave a few seconds here and there.

I ended up with a lovely stack of triangles to tear the paper from. This did not take quite as long as I thought it would, which was nice. I sat down in front of the tv and got to work. The cat joined me, but she was more interested in the contained I was tossing the paper scraps into than the actual triangles. There were a couple that I probably tugged a little too hard on and the edge stitches came undone, but it wasn’t anything that a quick stitch or two on the machine couldn’t solve.

When I started piecing, I did one block at at time until the entire unit was finished. This felt like it took forever, so I took a page from Kimberly Jolly of the Fat Quarter Shop (Have I said how much I love them yet? Because it’s my favorite online shop!) and did all of the pieces that I could in groups. This seemed to move things along a bit faster, and again, when I can save a few seconds here and there, it makes me happy. I sewed my blocks together anxious to see what it would look like when I laid the pieces out.

Since I wasn’t following my original plan, I was a little afraid it wasn’t going to work out, but as I laid out the pieces last night I realized my planning paid off and I was pretty darn thrilled with what I have. I’m looking forward to moving on to part 3!

Here We Go! Eight Carat Quilt Along Part 1

When it comes to shopping for quilting supplies, I don’t have a lot of option locally, so I have to do my shopping online, and have had to since I started exploring quilting about 9 years ago. One place I’ve been ordering from consistently is the Fat Quarter Shop. Not only am I a Sew Sampler Box member (and have been since the first box), but I give them major props for the way they work to connect with their customers. They have great blog content, fantastic tutorials and live videos, and having spoken to their customer service on the phone (and I dread having to use the phone), they are top notch. They recently released the Triangles on a Roll Quilts Book to go along with their Triangle Paper by It’s Sew Emma. Since my half square triangle skills are decidedly lacking, I decided to give their Eight Carat Quilt Along a go. The quilt along uses their triangle paper in 3” and 4” finished sizes and two patterns from the Triangles on Roll Quilts Book.

I had big plans for using some fabric from my stash, but when I got ready to starch the fabric, I realized that the fabric I thought was fat quarters were very much not. Plan B came in the form of fat quarters that were in the October 2017 (yikes!) Sew Sampler Box, Tula Pink’s Spirit Animal. Usually if I want to create the project that comes in the box, I’ll purchase the rest of the fabric. For this one, I didn’t purchase the fabric, so this collection was just open stash. I made a plan, which I’ll share more about in a future post, chose my fabrics, starched, and got to work.

I’m a fan of foundation paper piecing. I have a tendency to be a bit of a lazy quilter/sewer sometimes. More of a 90-percenter, if you will (plus a little Angela Walters “finished is better than perfect” thrown in for good measure), so when I have something that gives me seemingly perfect blocks. So, I set out to stock my fabric and pin the paper on top.

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Next, I took it over to my sewing machine, my trusty Janome DC2011 that doesn’t have a fancy name other than “my sewing machine” and started stitching. Using the recommended 1.5 stitch length I followed the arrows along the dotted lines. Easy peasy!

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Once that was complete, I cut the pieces on the solid line and ended up with 32 perfect half square triangle in two colorways. I will admit that peeling the paper always makes me nervous. I’m afraid that I’m just going to yank out the stitches, so I’m extra careful when doing that.

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The directions suggest trimming off the “ears,” so I did. I tried it two ways, the first was lining up a ruler and using my rotary cutter, and the second was just taking my fabric scissors to the tiny triangles. I decided that the scissors was the better option for me, plus I could step away from the sewing room to finish that part of the project.

I laid out the block, which is quite sizable, and it mostly fit on my table, and set out to sew the individual blocks together followed by the rows. My seam ripper and I did make friends a couple of times, but it mostly went quite well. As the block started coming together, I will admit, I was getting pretty giddy about how nicely it was coming out. I finished the final seam and gave it a nice press (all of the seams are pressed open in this block). There are a couple of places where everything doesn’t match up quite as nicely as I would hope for, but overall, I’m incredibly happy with this giant block! What do you think?

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