Let's Play with Our Fabric!

My rotary cutter has a sharp, new blade. My bobbins are full. My sewing machine has a new needle. (Yes, I heard a happy sigh from her when I put in a new needle.) If you don't remember the last time you gave your girl a new needle, then it is definitely time to do it! Let's get our mystery started.

We are going to start with easy, peasy 2 patches. Yeah, right...more on that later. (Note you won't need any background fabric(s) this week.)

Let's cut some 2-1/2" strips from our fabric selection. Please, please be generous when cutting your strips. Place that 2-1/2" dot/line marker ON the fabric, not butted up against the fabric edge, but ON THE FABRIC? You will thank me for teaching you to cut this way. I firmly believe that the only reason a quilter needs to master a "scant quarter inch" (whatever that really means) is because they CUT the fabric scanty to begin with.

As you cut the strips of fabric, toss into a bowl. When you cut from Fat Quarters or full width of fabric, sub cut your strips in 10" to 11" lengths to mix it up a bit when you sew.

Now stir your bowl full of fabric up to mix it all up.

What? You prefer shaken, not stirred? OK. Toss them into a big bag, and Shake, Shake, Shake your fabric.  Mix it up, toss it all about. Go ahead do the Hokey Pokey if you want, no judgement here, and it may add steps to your Fitbit for the day.

Choose 2 fabrics out of our bowl (or bag) randomly. Be brave, you can do it! Sew them together lengthwise.

WAIT A MINUTE, that quarter inch seam looks kind of fat. I opened, pressed and measure that first strip. Sure enough my strip set didn't measure 4-1/2"! Dog gone it! People, always do one test drive first. Yep, had I followed my own rule, I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to commune with my seam ripper.

OK, let's try that again.

Much, much better.

Now that I have created a bunch of strip sets pressed open to 4-1/2" wide, it time to chop, Chop, CHOP! them up! This is where the June Taylor Shape Cutter comes in handy.

See? We will be subcutting the strips in 2-1/2" units. When we are done chopping, you will have lots and lots of 2-1/2" x 4-1/2"  two patch units.

Now if you were really, really wanting to cut up 2-1/2" squares and sewing them into 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" two patch units, you go for it. I'm a bit too lazy today to do that, but I applaud your initiative.

Does it matter which way the strips are pressed? No. Be patient, you will see why in a few weeks.

So how many of these 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" two patch blocks will we need for this project. You would ask that I suppose. This sounds suspiciously like my grade school math nemesis, the Story Problem.

Let's see, if there are a bunch of blocks that each need a bazillion 2 patch units...where is my calculator, my slide rule, or Stoney when I need them?

Well after much cyphering and thinking and rechecking...I multiplied it all by 7 and then took the square root of that to arrive at...… 172 each 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" two patch units.

This is how I keep the units together until assembly time. And just for kicks and giggles, I included in the picture my scrap heap that I generated on this step.

So what was I talking about when I said Yeah, right earlier when cutting my 2-1/2" strips? Remember last week when I told you that if you were are careful cutter you could use a Layer Cake on this project? Yeah, well I was carefully cutting 2-1/2" strips, except on 4 squares I very carefully cut a 3" strip. Next week we will see how we roll with it and get out of that corner I backed myself into.

See you next week!