Helpful Hints on the Four Patch Square

 

I have taken a number of quilting classes over the past two years and have been fortunate to have wonderful teachers who always surprise me with new "tricks of the trade." A few weeks ago I signed up for a Pineapple Quilt Class and the foundation for the blocks used to create the Pineapple Quilt is the appropriately named "Four Patch Square" pictured above. To construct a Four Patch Square, one typically sews two strips of fabric together to create two patches of the square. Below you will see two sets of strips sewn together. These strips measure 2 1/2" strips. One would typically cut a 2 1/2" segment from the strips to then place the segments together and sew them opposite of each other to form the Four Patch Square unit. This is time consuming and tedious.

Our class instructor, Jan, showed us a shortcut that saves time and, for the most part, ensures that your seams remain secure resulting in a nice, accurate center. Here's the trick. Simply lay two sewn strips on top of each other with opposite colors facing each other and right sides together as displayed below.

Once you have the fabric "right sides" together and the center seams "feel" like they are smoothly sandwiched or butted up against each other (see below)...

 ...simply press the entire length of the strips together, one on top of the other. The pressing seems to hold the seams in place.

Once you have allowed the pressed strips to cool, transfer them to your cutting mat. Allow your pressed strips to cool as transferring them to your cutting mat while they are still hot from ironing may damage your "self-healing" cutting mats.

Double check the entire length of the strip to ensure that the seams didn't shift as you transferred the strips to the cutting mat. In my brief experience in utilizing this process, shifting has not happened, but I am not saying it cannot happen, so take just a moment to ensure that the seams are sandwiched up against each other along the length of the entire strip by running your finger tips along the sandwiched seams to check your fabric alignment.

With a quick check, you can see here (photo above) that there was no shift--the center seams are still sandwiched--or butted up against each other. Proceed with cutting your segments--in this case each set will be cut at 2 1/2".

I typically have stacked my cut segments and "chain" sewn them. In this demonstration, I have only shown sewing the first in a series of Four Patch Square sets.

Once you have sewn the unit together, set your seam by gently pressing the seam follow the instructions below.

To help your Four Patch lay flat, there is a very simple process that allows one to press the center so that the middle appears as pictured below:

The difficult part is getting your seams in the center to "pop" open to allow this center press.

Here's another helpful hint passed on to me by one of my classmates, Jennie. To get the center to "pop" open--check this out---simply hold your Four Patch Square along the seam as shown below:

...and gently rotate your fingers and thumbs up so that the seam will literally "blossom" between your fingertips.

Once you have "popped the seam," press your Four Patch so that the back looks like this--with all of the seams going in the same direction.

If you haven't noticed by now--I am a true "south paw" or "lefty." If you are right handed--well, you would probably be cutting differently and ironing in a different direction--don't let my "handedness" confuse you--just replicate the steps in a mirrored fashion and you should be fine.

Once you have completed your Four Patch Square unit--don't forget to "square it up" according to your pattern requirements.

Good luck with your Four Patch Squares--and I hope this was a nice illustration of some helpful hints!

A huge "Thank You" to Jan and Jennie!!!!

Coffee Anyone?

I realize that I haven't blogged for a few weeks, but I have to admit--I have been consumed with quilting, quilting classes and life--as I am sure many of you are! Currently I am working on five quilts if you include this quilt pictured above which was just finished.

I am very happy about this most recent quilting accomplishment because this featured quilt was made for a very close friend who will be moving to a new land for a few years. This quilt was designed with a purpose in mind: to gift a very special quilt to someone who has been in my life for almost twenty years. So, you may have want to ask, "But this quilt, depicts coffee. Why, what is the significance of coffee?" Behind every quilt, there is a story, so, here's the story...

In 1993 I became a member of a group--or as Sherman Alexie refers to in one of his books, "a member of a tribe," a tribe comprised, in large part, of people who used to get together to work. At that time, we opened a new school together--it was a fantastic endeavor which was a huge success. From that "tribe" evolved a smaller, more select group of women who, over time, developed a friendship--and an appreciation for each other's company. For fun and exercise we used to play volleyball and basketball on the weekends and often we would bring our family members. Somewhere along the way we began a "women's basketball league" for the local community--so other women could enjoy the type of  companionship we had experienced through exercise, but also, because we could. Over time the volleyball and basketball fell to the wayside and some of our friends left our little group while others joined. Today, our little "tribe" still gets together, not on the hardwood with a basketball in hand, but rather in the comfort of a local coffee shop or at each other's homes to enjoy the company of our friends, to chit chat, as well as to drink coffee (there's the coffee bit) or tea with a book in hand. This is a very informal affair--filled with laughter, sharing, and fun--because we talk about our lives, people in our lives, current affairs, books, friends, and family--occasionally, we even discuss work--but very quietly, mind you. Every member of the book club selects a book for the year and as the year progresses each of us reads the book to be discussed at upcoming book club gatherings. Our book club gets together in the morning--and at today's book club, I was welcomed with a steaming cup of coffee.

So what is so special about this quilt as it relates to the book club? As I said, earlier one of our "bookies" will be leaving for awhile--to another country, so we wanted to send something with her to remind her of us--I thought it would be appropriate to present her with a quilt and the rest of our members agreed! But the question remained--what kind of fabric? What kind of design?

It just so happens that while on a road trip in December, I was thumbing through a "Love of Quilting" magazine (Fons & Porter, November/December 2010) when I happened upon an advertisement for fabric entitled "Daily Grind" by Barb Tourtillotte (available at www.ClothworksTextiles.com). That is where the inspiration for creating this quilt design began.

Now some advice here, one should never order the fabric until you have designed the quilt so that you know how much fabric to purchase--unless, that is, if you are willing to buy extra fabric! Every avid quilter will attest to the fact that one must have fabric in a stash for a future "scrappy" quilt, or two----maybe even three! I did not have a design in mind when I ordered the fabric, but I knew that given the type of fabrics involved, I should order less of the "motif" fabric and more of the fabric that I could use for other projects. I also knew that I wanted to have coordinating fabric that could be cut into blocks upon which personal messages could be written that would be later incorporated into the quilt.  I did purchase extra because extra could be relegated to my fabric cache (pun intended).

If you look very closely, the immediate center piece is a panel design surrounded by swatches of fabric. I used the embroidery feature on my sewing machine (a new learning experience for me) to print out a line from a song written by and about the book club members (very talented women) so that the messages from the "ladies of the book club" are "all gathered 'round" is positioned at the top and bottom of the center design.  I then "fussy cut" some of elements out of the the extra panels I had purchased so that I could incorporate the pieces into my center design for balance. Typically a panel design is equivalent to a yard of fabric. The "Daily Grind" panel is bordered by the innermost maroon fabric, while the personalized messages from the book club members is within the borders of the white and maroon lacy print fabric.

One of the challenges in working with a pre-designed fabric panel is it always dictates the size you have to work with, more or less, unless you are willing to cut into the panel itself--which basically defeats the purpose of purchasing it for use in the first place. My choice to use this panel, for the most part was largely due to the fact that it was very well done, provided a nice motif, and served as a starting point for this quilt.

Given the dimensions of the panel, I began to draft out several ideas, but was at a complete loss as to what I wanted to do--until the opportunity arose for yet another road trip. As the navigator of the trip, I had learned long ago that taking books or magazines makes the miles fly by--and trips are also opportunities for new discoveries. For this particular trip, I brought along a recently acquired book entitled Big Book of Scrap Quilts (Oxmoor House, Inc., 2005) wherein I found this pattern for a quilt block.




I decided that this quilt block could be easily and quickly done (thought wrong--I'll explain shortly), and would add nicely to the quilt. I had a plan and began designing the 4x4 blocks shown below:

(Can you see the coffee cup and swirls of coffee aroma decorative stitching in the sashing of the 4 x 4 block?)

Each of the appliqued coffee cup blocks is constructed of eight distinct pieces of fabric--five pieces for the background and three for the coffee cup. The background pieces were easily cut and sewn together, however before cutting the pieces that align with the saucer pieces the fabric had to be facing up so that the cuts were at the correct angle to align with the saucer fabric piece. Of course the building of the coffee cups took significantly more time. Each piece for the cup itself needed to be individually cut. The saucer pieces could be "stacked and whacked" which was fast and easy, but the cup and handle had to be individually cut, then once cut, I had to cut fusible mesh for each corresponding coffee cup piece. I had sewn a fusible mesh onto the correct side of the coffee cup fabric pieces and turned them right-side out so that the fusing could be on the back of each cup piece with the correct side of the fabric facing up with the wrong side of the fabric to be pressed onto the background center piece. Working with the fusing took the longest. So here's a simplification tip from one of my sewing teachers, Jan. She suggested the following: "Since you were going to add the decorative stitch to outline the cup, rather than sewing the fusible mesh to the handle, simply cut the handle and fusing out, press, then sew the decorative stitch around the coffee cup. This would have been enough to keep the fabric in place and prevent it from fraying." Wise words from a wise woman!  Following her idea would have saved me untold hours. Fumbling with the handles was difficult and time consuming because they were small and curved.

An additional helpful note. When following someone else's pattern for a quilt block, redesign the block to meet your own needs. In constructing the "Cups and Saucers" block out of the Big Book of Scrap Quilts (2005, pgs. 14-16) wherein the pattern calls for a finished block of 6 3/4" x 7," had I known better, I would have adjusted the pattern to generate a 7"x 7 1/2" block which, in the end, would have been much easier to work with when calculating my design for a finished queen size quilt. To fiddle around with a 6 3/4" finished block measurement rather than a 7" finished block took additional math that, in the end was relatively unnecessary work.

Finally, you will notice that I "fussy" cut several coffee cups to make up for some space between the 4X4 blocks where I needed to make up for additional space. This was a very simple process as long as I didn't let "finished" and "unfinished" dimensions confuse me. As long as I stayed with finished sizes when I was looking at the quilt, and worked with "unfinished" measurements when I was looking at my design and cutting the fabric, I was okay!

With my cup of coffee in hand, "Here's you you!"