rachel you could also put the smaller pieces in a pillowcase and tie it up for washing them.

elle absolutely beautiful

Oh Patti what a drag to HAVE to go shopping :XD: good luck

Luv, thank you, got a long ways to go thougH.

Lesley, however you managed to do this quilt in this time span I don´t know, I am in awe of you.

Elle

LOL, Elle, it was easy - I just did nothing else! I have a garden that's a mess, and the house isn't much better at the moment, though its a relief not to have tiny bits of paper/fabric all over the place. I really need to tidy up, but I reckon I can do that once it is backed, and all I need to do is stitch in the ditch round all my blocks. I got the first border on yesterday, and it seemed to go on well, but I'm not saying it was a success until I get the next one on, with a corner in place, as I'm winging this part because of the way I made everything. I made all the triangles the size of the ruler, and that was before I decided to put in 3/4in sashing, so I had to make the plain tris bigger. The software won't adjust for different sized tris (alternating), so I cut out paper shapes and stuck them together and so far, it seems to have worked. I'm just not sure if I will need to adjust a little bit when the first corner goes on.

Patti, you don't actually need to have a separate fabric for cornerstones, Jane didn't, did she? But don't let me stop you from going shopping!

Ooooh good idea!!!! I was just thinking about how I could do it since I forgot to buy a bag when I was at the grocery store!! Thanks for the great idea. Off to wash!! :)

Cheers!
Rachel

A couple of thoughts and observations I have been meaning to mention. For those of you who are intending to make your outer tris in the same fabric as your backgrounds, you might want to consider slightly altering some of your pieced tris. For instance, I didn't do that for RS11, as it hadn't occurred to me, so I dutifully sewed on the very narrow strips of background along each long edge. When I realised how sillly this was, considering that narrow strip was going to all but disappear against my plain tris, I stopped doing it. So with BR2, I just extended the central areas of tri to make the tri big enough to trim down with the ruler, without adding on the narrow border. The same went for RS1, again I extended all the coloured and background sections and avoided the narrow outer strips. There may have been one or two others too, but these are the ones I can remember offhand.

My other observation, now that I have assembled my borders, (I only have one on, so far,) is for those of you intending to QAYG. When you choose a quilting design for the outer, plain tris, make sure that it leaves you a half inch unquilted on both long sides of the tri. It will make it much easier to assemble the border, and you will be able to quilt right to the edge of the pieced tris this way.

Can you show us how you are assembling your tris as QAYG? I was thinking tht that may be alittle harder than the blocks themselves ....

Rachel

Hmm, bear with me while I go take some pics. Be back soon.

Ok, here is how I have been assembling one of the borders. From my point of view, having done QAYG, I didn't have any sashing that I could get rid of the bulk of my W&N batting, as each tri is stitched to the next.

As I said above, I quilted the plain tris with about a half inch unquilted on each long side, that gave me room to manoevre when sewing them to the patched ones. It meant always sewing with the plain tri nearest to me so that I could see to line them up, and because of that I had to keep turning the border back and forth, but it worked out very well.

Thank you for taking pics Lesley. I’ll have to think about how I can adapt that to work with a QAYG that has the backing already attached ….

Rachel

Oh my goodness Lesley that does look good. You are making a grand job there. Well done and thanks for the Tute.

Elle

Rachel, just noticed something, you and I were looking at this within two minutes of each other on opposite sides of the World and both commenting on it. Amazing

Weeeeeird …… LOL I bet you aren’t at work right now though!! ;) It was about 3:15 in the afternoon when I posted mine.

Rachel

Nope being retired this is one pleasure I haven´t got (lucky person that I am) it was around 9.15 pm tonight approx when I saw it. As you all say out there, Have a nice day

Elle

I think you could just trim close to the stitching on both sides, then cover the join on the back with a strip of fabric, hand stitched on both sides? That would eliminate the bulk of the batting, but it's a lot of hand sewing instead.

Oh you just made me think of it! You actually make sure you don’t stitch all the way to the edge of either block, you want to leave about a ½ inch at least. Then you fold back the batting and the backing and sew the fronts right sides together with the normal ¼ inch seam. Then you put the batting back and trim it so it lays flat (should be about a ¼ inch off each). Then you lay one side of the backing flat (It will extend over the other tri a bit) and then you fold the other under ¼ of an inch and hand stitch it down. This way you don’t have to use any covering strips. You could extend your quilting on the blocks to the edges after you do this if you want as well.

Yay!!
Rachel

I think that would work very well, especially as you don't have to line up the seams on the back as you would with all the squares in the middle. (If you didn't with the squares in the middle, it would look very untidy doing it this way).

Lovely looking border Lesley, it really is a cracking quilt!

I did the same thing. Isn't it great fun! I've got a small bee of about 15 ladies and only one of them is keeping up with the schedule. The rest of us, myself included, are horribly behind. :roll: Likely it'll be 2012 before I'm finished with this quilt too. (Maybe longer. I attract UFOs like bees to a flower.) Oddly enough, everyone of us are waiting until later to do the triangles.

Most of the gals in my group are doing the QAYG method. A few of them have an irish chain pattern going on the back, which is cool.

My machine keeps chewing up the smaller pieces, which is really frustrating. I'm going to have to go out and buy a single throat plate, which should fix the problem, or so all my friends and Sally Collins (who works in SMALL pieces!) says. If it doesn't, I'm sending them a bill for the $40 part! Stupid to pay $2000 for a machine and then not have an open toed walking foot or a single throat plate. (Stepping off soap box now.)

I thought I broke my wrist yesterday. I didn't but darn me if I am unable to do any handwork at the moment without a lot of pain. I spent the last week and a half getting all my little applique pieces ready to go and now they are just staring at me in a very accusatory way. How can fabric do that!?! :shock:

Kimby: I love your dark Jane. I think that is going to be very striking once it is all done!

Rachel: I know I'm a few days late, but I say your 3rd photo of the quilt is the best. I find it visually interesting and the colors are quite exciting to me. Beautiful mock-up!! As for washing fabrics, I always wash my fabrics first. Mostly for health reasons but I would even if I weren't allergic to all the stuff they put in the fabric. I would hate to spend hundreds and hundreds of hours on a DJ quilt only to discover the dye ran or one of the fabrics shrunk horribly and caused it to pucker. Just give it a quick wash in warm water, dry, and fold. You really don't need to iron all 8 yards at once. Simply cut off what you need and then iron it. Trust me, it'll save you a ton of frustration.

Elle: Your quilt reminds me of a flower garden. I'm still drooling here!!

Leslie: Your quilt is turning out fantastic! I love the bright colors.

Sorry about the book-sized length of post. Teach me to miss a few days in here.

I don't mind a book at bedtime, Tiffany! LOL. Sorry to hear about your wrist, you didn't say what happened to make you think it was broken, but I hope it heals in double quick time so that you can get back to the applique soon.

I have a single stitch plate, but never needed to use it, because I sewed all my blocks with the quarter inch foot, not an open toed foot. Try doing that first, before you spend all that money.

Thank you Tiffany, I agree the third one is the most striking, that's the one I am going to aim for :) I ended up washing my fabric using the suggestion of the pillow case, it is drying right now. I will just fold it up and iron the pieces as I cut them off, otherwise I think I would drive myself crazy!! I also use a quarter inch foot and didn't see to have a problem with small pieces. Of course I also chain stitch everything so I never have loose threads at the beginning of my blocks. I keep a pile of 2 inch squares on hand and run those through at the end of each stitch I take, they then sit under my foot till I am ready to sew the next thing. This seems to help prevent fabric from getting sucked in. :)

Cheers!
Rachel

Well, this will teach me to be busy elsewhere today and last night...lots of posts! Thanks for much for sharing more tips about the quilting Lesley...Your border is going on so well...I'm so in love with your quilt. I want mine to move along faster but I have some other things I have to deal with...I really don't know "why" my DH thinks he must eat...and do it at least 2 times per day???!!! :shock:

Get him to get his own, and some for you Patti! It's not much fun being dumped, but at least I only have to cook for one, and then when I want it, rather than when someone else does!

Okay, question for you gals. I have settled on the third option for my Blue and Orange DJ, but it also has some white in there. The different shades of blue are the background for all the blocks, and I was planning on having a different fabric for every orange block for interest. I am wondering what you would do if you were me on the white blocks? Should I have those all be different as well (but obviously the blue background would stay consistent), or should I have the whites all be the same fabric so the orange blocks pop out more?

Thanks!
Rachel

I think I would use the same white throughout, but it doesn't have to be a plain one, perhaps a white on white, but with the same pattern all the way through. You have quite a few colour changes, but if some of your whites and less than white compared to others, I think they will look dirty, IMHO.

I agree with Lesley...although when I was coloring it to begin with I was thinking that I would use some white/orange prints of different scales so that it would appear that the color kind of "flows" from orange to white and vise -versa...does that make sense or is it just stupid?

I have a quarter inch foot which works wonderfully and is amazing. However, I don't use it when paper piecing, which is what I'm doing with most of the blocks. The DJ blocks are actually rather large compared to some of the stuff I'm starting to do, which are things like making a four patch that is only half an inch square, and my machine likes to eat those. YUM! Crunchy! ...GRRRRR...

My wrist is a tad embarrassing. I spanked my dog. I know, I know, the first image you get is of someone beating the crud out of a dog but it wasn't like that at all, honest! Cody keeps getting into the trash and eating my dirty kleenex. Okay, first off - EWWW! Second, that's just wrong. He's been at it for about a month now and usually my husband disciplines him (he rarely needs it; he's wonderful except for this kleenex thing) because I have a weak wrist. I shattered it about 5-6 years ago and it's never been the same since. Plus, back in the 90's a surgeon was snipping the sheath that holds the tendon and accidentally cut it off, so I have issues with the tendon too. To make a long story short, Cody got into my trash and I knew I needed to spank his butt or he wouldn't take me seriously enough to stop. Cody is a sweetheart but he's a solid dog and swatting his butt was like hitting concrete. Two swats and my wrist said I was done. Cody hasn't gotten into the trash since so I'm hoping it worked. If not, I'm going to just stuff all the trash cans on the counters and ignore the problem until I can replace them all with cans with lids.

Dumb dog. ... Dumb owner. :roll:

No it makes total sense! I will have to look around and see what I can find, maybe I can find a nice pattern that have a light orange with lots of white that will read as white when farther away ….. I was leaning towards one shade of WOW for the whites, and I agree, I think different shades of white may end up detracting from the already complicated pattern. Now that I know other people agree, I feel better about doing that!! :)

Cheers!
Rachel

Tiff, sorry about your wrist - perhaps a rolled up magazine or newspaper might give extra swish without causing you damage? I've had carpal tunnel problems, so I can sympathsize on your tendon problem. Did you sue the surgeon? It sounds like carelessness to me.

Nice idea, to find graduating fabrics that go from totally white through several prints to orange. Best of luck with your search Rachel.

I have been missing out, as I haven't read this thread in a while!!!

Lesley, your quilt is coming along beautifully!

Elle, I love the contrasting black blocks and your hand is lovely.

Rachel, I like the third option the best too!

Patti, your kitties look sooo funny. :lol:

Rachel, you might want to look at something like this for your oranges if you can find it. Klue was using the "strip it" for her red...if you can find it in orange..that would work wonderfully for you!

Hmm never heard of it, did a quick looksie and it looks like a jelly roll type thing .... that could work since it's a smaller amount of fabrics, I'll have to keep an eye out for orange. :) I am starting a new block today, M-11. That one didn't look too hard, I'll post pics when I am done!

Cheers!
Rachel

Well duh...it would have helped you if I had included the link in the post huh???? I'm stupid tonight...I'll blame it on the old "menie" :lol::lol: Here is the link http://www.quiltingboard.com/t-23790-3.htm Scroll down the page until you get to the red/white stripes

I gotcha now!! that would be cool if they had it in orange!! :) Hmmm I'll have to try and track that down .....

Rachel

Rachel, Ihave to tell you orange is very difficult to find, sorry to be the bearer of news like that. I had a project that called for orange, eventually I found a batik with orange in that I could use, but will have a little search for you too to see what I can come up with.

Elle

I agree!! That's why I asked people on the board to help me. I traded some of my scraps for good size pieces of orange. I ended up with quite a few usable pieces, but probably not even half of what I need. Hopefully I will be able to find enough in the time that it takes me to use what I have (which most likely I will as I have a feeling this quilt will end up being finished on the eve on my son's wedding night and he's 7 :-D :shock: ) But I know this is an almost impossible task, especially trying to find 3 shades of orange!!! :) That's kind of why I went with Pat's idea of having the white in there, not so much orange to find!! :) :)

Cheers!
Rachel

Rachel, you might not need as much as you think. If you think of the largest diamond shape on the quilt (in my case it was a Turqoise that went from A7 to G13, to M7 to G1, I only had 1 yard). Admittedly, there isn't much left of it, but I thought that wsan't bad. The four blocks around the middle block, I had a fat quarter to do them, and again, that went well

Yes I am discovering that as I do a few blocks, I thought I would need at least an 1/8 yard, but like for M11 I just did, I think I used maybe half of an 1/8 yard cut. I know some will need more, some less, so I just have all my pieces together now, even the small ones. But since I am trying to have every orange block with a different fabric, I still need a lot of different orange prints. LOL I guess as I near the end my thought on all different oranges may change as they get harder to find!!! :)

Cheers!
Rachel

I have good news for you Rachel. I have found a store that sells loads of orange fabrics, about 7 pages in fact, sure to find something in there I think?

Here is the link:

www.fatquartershop.com/store/stores/-app/Browse-dept-items.asp?T=&Store

Hope this works for you, if not just put in www.fatquarter.com
and search button for Orange

Elle

Ohhh good find! Although you'd think seeing as the name of their site is "Fat Quarter Shop" they would sell all their fabrics in fat quarter cuts as well, but no you have to buy at least a half yard. LOL Still they have a lot of different options from what I currently have, which is a good thing!! Thanks for poitning that out!!

Cheers!
Rachel