Scrabble Jack

At Black Bag Saturday (Aug. 2013) I picked up this awesome pattern by Happy Hollows Design for a pumpkin wall hanging, the pumpkins teeth read "Happy Fall Y'all". 

This project brought a new element into my quilting because it used fusible grid paper. And let me start off by saying how awesome this stuff is!! It makes your piecing look so precise when really you don't have to do much. 

For the pattern your working with 1 7/8th inch squares. Over 200 of them! So the start of this quilt for me was a huge cutting session. I had about 12 fat quarters in orange hues, 4 in black, 3 in brown, and one in green. After I cut what seemed like a billion squares I laid out my fusible grid and got to work.  

The great thing about the grid is you can lay everything out and play with placement to make sure where you like items before you commit to sewing or even fusing the items in place. For me once I laid everything out I actually did my first ironing on my dining room table (don't tell the husband please!). I did put batting under the grid to protect the table. This allowed me to move the whole piece to the ironing board for a true press. 

 

When pressing you're adhering 1 7/8th inch squares to 2 inch fusible grid so there is some exposed glue. Because of this the ladies at my new favorite quilting store introduced me to an appliqué pressing sheet. You place it over the quilt squares and iron right on top so it gets the glue, not your iron. 

Once all your squares are fused you fold the grid paper row by row and sew across horizontally. Then once all the horizontal rows are complete you move on to vertical rows. However there is a step in the middle. You need to go through and snip at the seam allowance between squares to help the grid paper fold and sew vertically. Once this is done you can move on to the vertical row sewing. 

Once your pieces are sewn to the fusible grid you cut out your shape and lay your backing on top, RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER-- I emphasis this because I did it wrong sides together and spent an hour seam ripping later. Once your pumpkin and backing are right sides together your batting is place over the backing. Then you sew your 1/4 inch seam around the outside of your pumpkin, leaving an area for turning it inside out at the bottom. 

Once sewn you cut off the excess backing and batting and clip the corners. Then turn inside out. Once inside out you will use a point turner to refine the corners and then finally see the bottom opening closed. 

The original pattern has a set of decorations that can be purchased including the scrabble teeth, raffia, and button eyes. It ran about $20 but I still bought it. Because I had so much fabric left I actually made a second Scrabble Jack and for it I found similar items to the buttons and raffia at Hobby Lobby and used them.

The end result was fantastic and those I know who quilt were impressed with my piecing accuracy! I let them in on the fusible grid secret and they loved it. I truly look forward to getting to hang these year after year now.

My First True Quilt!! The Sudoku lap quilt

I am so excited to share this post because it is showcasing my first true quilt. The quilt is a lap size quilt which I quilted by doing stitch in the ditch. I pieced the backing together on my own (more to come on that), and I did the binding on my own as well. 

For this quilt my inspiration came from the fact that in my Craftsy Grab Bag box I received back in December it had a Fat Quarter Bundle from Robert Kaufman of 9 fabrics from the Perfectly Perched and Modern Slicker lines. The all matched gorgeously but I wasn't quite sure what type of quilt I would make that had birds, chairs and other random images on it. Well lucky for me my husband and I were talking about Sudoku and how it features 9 unique numbers. I ran with that and actually found a free Craftsy pattern for a Sudoku quilt. 

It was perfect, 9 nine-patches with sashing in between. I knew I could handle nine-patches and that since I was working with fat quarters I made sure to use the Robert Kaufman Quilt Calc app to be check what size squares I should make to ensure I had enough fabric. I settled on 3.5 inch squares. 

The hardest part on this quilt is making sure you keep track of where each square in each block goes. If you don't the Sudoku pattern will not be correct. 

After cutting all my fabric squares and laying them out I labeled the blocks and laid them out on one surface. Then I worked from there to stitch each block together so I knew they were in the right order. 

Knowing which side is the top, bottom, left, and right of each block is important for this quilt. I kept my blocks spread on one surface at all times in the same was I was going to put them on the quilt. I also made fabric swatches identifying which block represents what number so I could reference that information later.  

For the sashing I had 1.5 inch strips. For a future quilt I would have done a little bigger I think. Cutting strips is one area I really need to work on. I will try to cut a few layers of fabric but it never seems to come out great, one part is always about a quarter inch to narrow, which in quilting can cause a huge accuracy problem.

When it came time to prepare the backing I ran into some surprises. I purchased 4 yards of the fabric For the backing from a website online because it was one of the fabrics that went with the fat quarter set that I had. And if you look closely you will notice that it is numbered zero through nine, which kept and perfect theme with my said Sudoku pattern. I purchased 4 yards, because I wanted to make sure I had plenty and I would be able to use it with the scraps left over from my fat quarters. Thank goodness I ordered extra fabric. The quilt top turned out to be wider than the 42 inches that the fabric comes, which meant I had to piece two pieces together to make the fabric cover the back of the quilt. 

Having never pieced a backing together before, I had not thought about the fact that when I cut the two pieces of fabric I should make sure they line up after the quarter inch seam was sewn. It wasn't a huge deal, however I would want to change that for quilts in the future.

The end result of the quilt I was very happy with, and it is used all the time at my house now.