y seam correction help and set triangle advice :)
 

hi! i need a little bit of help with a project.

as you can see i made this lone star and it turned out pretty well (after recutting everything and starting all over again, but since i typed that in brackets it's a secret.)

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the first y-seam and corresponding border piece went well and the rest seemed okay, but when i laid it out i realized i was going to need to fix either my star or my y seams.

so i laid it out again and pinned the star down to the batting (for lack of a better idea - it's a working surface more than anything....) and i am pleased to see that the star is lying very flat, yet my white set triangles and borders need a lot of tightening up.

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my question is....how do i mark the needed adjustments? i basted the borders knowing there was going to be some stitch ripping in my future, and i see that i was very right. but how do i tighten the seams enough but not too much, and how do i do it without distorting all the the things that have gone right so far?

my second question is about squaring off this octagon. using jinny beyer's design that turns the star on point and creates these colourful triangles, i want to extend the quilt into a queen size bed quilt.

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do i have to make those set triangles that square off the quilt in two pieces or can i use the existing octagon as a template, cut a singular piece with the right angles and stitch it on whole? does that make sense? i'm not interested in tapering the set triangles in jinny's fancy way, just making the octagon square by bringing the fabric to the points....

if i've missed another post about how to do either of these things, please teach me how to properly search so i can find it myself for next time. new boards are always tricky.

i'm looking forward to getting to know some of you, to sharing stories, tips, tricks and the occasional rant unto tears.

the one thing i have missed in my quilting life is the sense that i might belong to a community. i'm hoping this might be it, if only virtually. thanks so much for your help!

aileen

How did you cut your white triangles? It looks to me as if the outer edge is on the bias, and bias has a huge tendency to stretch out of shape when you work with it. In general, it's preferable to make the outer edge of a triangle on the straight-of-grain.

Also, I would have heavily starched the white fabric before cutting the triangles, to stabilize the fabric and help keep any bias edges from stretching with handling. If the white fabric has not been starched and you start ripping and re-sewing, you may still end up with stretched edges from all the handling. At the very least, before starting to make any adjustments, I would spray starch the entire top, and especially those edges (spray starch several times).

Did you measure and pre-cut those blue border pieces before you sewed them to the white fabric? Or did you just sew a strip of blue border to the white? It looks to me as if you did the latter, in which case the white fabric stretched as you sewed and you now have too much border fabric on the white. To adjust for this, I would rip out the corner seams for several inches (about halfway up each side of each white piece) until you can get the edges to lie flat, then mark with a light pencil line down the white fabric for where the seam line should be. I would pin first, then sew, then check for flatness before trimming the seam line.

Edit: I realized after posting that you should do the ripping first, until everything lies flat, then do the spray starching (to keep everything lying flat), then do the marking, then do the sewing.

As for your second question, what you could do instead is machine applique the octagon edge to a piece of fabric, then trim off the fabric behind the octagon. That way you would not need to cut triangles, piece triangles, or manipulate fabric that has bias cut edges.

bias! aaaargh!

this quilt and i are a lesson in forest for the trees.

i did starch the white, but not as heavily as some of the fabrics in the star. i wonder if it would be better to gently remove the triangles and recut new ones? this quilt is a gift and the person i am making it for bought the fabric without me and as a result i have quite an excess of everything.

i used kaye woods pivot method to fit the y seams and i was so nervous about that point i didn't think one bit about the bias.

i matched the blue to the white as you suspected. i don't have any more of that fabric, but it has been properly starched and handled very gently, so i imagine it will be more than fine once affixed to less stretchy triangles :)

thank you so much for your help! it was like a light switch in my head :)

aileen

Lovely colors in this piece.

The star does look like it's laying nice and flat.

And the white with blue border does look a bit ruffly.

Hope you get it the way you want it.

I agree with having the straight grain on the edges. Do you have enough of the white to cut new pieces? It might make your life easier.

Sometimes redoing it is the only (good) solution. Unsewing is a drag, though.

Sorry you are having a problem. I just wanted to say that I love your star! You did an excellent job and I love the fabric as well. Hope everything turns out fine for you. I'm sure it will.

recut is the way with this one it seems. when i gift it, i may very well use all the rejected pieces and make a picnic quilt for the summer! i've had to do the whole thing twice 9and more in two instances!)

i can see now why people both love the star patterns and get really into doing them and why people do one and never go near again :)

thanks again!

aileen