I had one chore that needed my attention before I could sew in peace. I couldn't remember the last time I had cleaned my sewing machine. Ummm...yep. It was time:
Looked like I had been stitching on a Woolly Mammoth coat.
I've had this teddy bear fabric for 4 or 5 years. I don't recall where I found it...perhaps Hobby Lobby...it kind of looks like something from the 80's, but teddy bears are classic and timeless:
I didn't have a plan, but at some point I thought about using a tilted block and that just stuck. I'd never made that block, but pulled out the fabric on Saturday, as well as some coordinating fabrics,
and gave it a test run. I didn't use a quilt pattern. I just did some figuring and used the old noggin.
I made a few paper templates in order to test things out. The red block had too much of a tilt so I regrouped and settled on the dimensions in the blue block. Using a 5" square, I ended up with a 7" block:
There is some waste when making these blocks and after doing some research, I saw that you could use a tri-recs ruler and eliminate the fabric waste, but I don't have one and I didn't really want to add another to my collection. :)
Once I figured everything out. I made 15 blue blocks and 15 red blocks and chain piecing made them come together quickly:
Once all the blocks were made, I made a plastic template to trim my blocks to size:
I made the red blocks tilt one way and the blue ones tilt the other.When I showed it to DH he said, "That's nice, but your bears are crooked". Funny guy.
8 comments:
The bears and the blocks are adorable! They will make a fun quilt.
This is going to be such a cute quilt!
That's going to be a wonderful quilt for some little guy or gal. What kind of plastic did you use to make the square template for your blocks. Everything I've ever found was too soft to use with a rotary cutter. Also, want to tell you that if you keep a pipe cleaner by your machine and work it around in all the cracks each time you change your bobbin, it will remove a great deal of that lint and you won't have that build up. They will curl around down where you can't see it and catch a large amount of lint before it gets too deep in your machine.
LOL to your hubby! Those tilted bears are darling. Sometimes it's fun just to sit and piece and not follow a pattern.
Adorable!! For future reference, you can just cut rectangles and slice them on the diagonal to get top/bottom and sides. End up with straight of grain on all outside edges, little if any waste and no specialty ruler. The direction of the cut determines the slant of the center. Just a thought.
I am sure that if I opened up my machine, it would look exactly the same as yours did! Thanks for the reminder! Your bear squares are just darling!! Leave it to a hubby to be a wise guy!! :)
This is sure to e a citie. When I saw the first block I wa thing paper piecing. How much easier and exact this is. Thanks for sharing, this is going on my Pinterest page.
Thank you very much for this post. I found an image on Google and followed it here. So glad you wrote up a tutorial. You rock.
And I must say, I was impressed by your herd of dust bunnies in your sewing machine. I thought I was the only one who was guilty of this LOL!
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