Saturday, August 8, 2009

Breakthrough quilt - Red and white pinwheel


This quilt was a breakthrough for me as a quilter.
I had just recieved Quilts Newsletter Magazine No. 74.
In it was an article by Barbara Johannah about how to make half square triangles by drawing them on a piece of fabric, placing it right side together with another piece of fabric, stitching on both sides of the diagonal and cutting them apart.
Voila! I was so excited and had to make something RIGHT away.
She used 1/2 inch seam allowances and I followed her directions to the letter.
I had seen this design in an old McCalls Quilting publication but they did it with smaller triangles and used a tiny yellow print, a tiny red print and cut each piece individually.
I thought I was being SO creative when I changed the size and the fabrics! I also hand quilted it 1/2 inch away from the seam lines!!!!! (Except for the one seam I missed and is still not quilted 32 years later)
This is my blankie and it is sitting on a foot stool less than 5 feet from me as I write this. It has traveled many places with me. If I want to take a nap I don't crawl into bed, I just cover myself from the tip of my toes to my neck with it and I'm sleeping in less than 5 minutes. When I travel and want to take a nap in a strange bed it also does the trick there.
One thing I didn't realize when I made this is for every square you drew you got two half square triangle squares after you sewed them together. Somewhere upstairs in a box there are enough pieces to make another quilt or do something else with them.

Once I learned how to do this there was NO stopping me. Within the week I made the quilt on the cover of that same issue of QN as a queen size quilt. I couldn't find any directions for it so I just measured it and figured out how to do it. Several years later I found out the cover quilt was only a crib size quilt but I had just doubled all their measurements!

Of course I had to use a triangle cut for this break through half square triangle quilt!
Click to Mix and Solve

2 comments:

Michelle said...

I could look at your quilts all day -- first I was in love with this one (am I crazy that I see red and white bats?), thn it was the colors of Lady of the Lake, then I scrolled down past the black and white bricks to the stars.... Wow!

Dolores said...

I remember the triangles too and one lady in our guild did a little demo for all of us and it really was an eye-opener at the time. Time saver too.