Saturday, July 17, 2010

CRAZY PATCHWORK


After working at a cracking pace, I have completed 48 half square triangle blocks of crazy patchwork. 39 blocks have been completed since Friday afternoon. I like to do quilts that aren't repetative, hence the rush to get this part done before I lost interest and had 20 metres of fabric kicking around my sewing room, cut up into pieces. Originally I had both machines set up - one for sewing and one for doing the decorative work, however I changed tack and decided to concentrate on the worst part!!
All the blocks have been sewn using tear away paper as the foundation. There will probably be a few days work trying to rip this out, but I need the paper under the blocks anyway to do the decorative embroidery stitches. I will also add a few butterflies and such with the embroidery machine - let's face it, I am on a roll now, and what was a going to be a strip quilt is now but a distant memory.
This tear away is the iron on type, this meant I could stick down the butterfly feature fabric, and then start adding the other fabrics.
For this type of crazy patchwork, the centre piece should have an uneven (in this case 5) number of sides. Because of the print of the fabric, a couple of mine did end up with 6 sides.

Crazy patchwork is achieved by simply sewing strips of fabric around your chosen centre. It is important to sew a seam, press back, then lay another strip of fabric across and sew, trim back any excess, press open and so on.
Just keep working around until the centre is filled and then work out to each corner. Something I did learn along the way - it is better just to cut your fabric into strips, rather than pieces. I had some small bits of fabric from the stash and I thought it would be a good idea to cut them up into 48 pieces - 1 for each block - but this made them difficult to use. Better to decide how far you think the fabric will go - say 12 out of 48 and then replace that fabric in the next 12 blocks, with something else. They can then all be mixed and matched at the end.




Just keep sewing, trimming and pressing until all the gaps are filled. These will now have the decorative stitching completed and then be trimmed up. At least during the construction phase I managed to empty 10 bobbins that had been half filled with assorted colour thread. It will never be seen.
Stay tuned!! Sue xxx

1 comment:

  1. Pretty blocks! Thanks for the idea of using tearaway for paper piecing! Can't wait to how this project continues.

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