This past Saturday I taught a workshop on the One Block Wonder Technique at the Eastern branch of the Irish Patchwork Society. It was a busy but satisfying day and I think the participants enjoyed it. I don't have a lot of photos from the day, but I thought I'd share those which have resulting blocks in them (pity I don't have everybody's), as well as the tips we were able to take away from the day. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished quilts, though finalizing the layouts may take quite some time. This is a picture I wanted to print out, but didn't manage to get to the printers'. It sums up what we did on the day very well (both the picture and the phrase were found on the Web). I will not run through the whole process of making a One Block Wonder quilt (there are a lot of tutorials around on the Web), but I do want to share some tips which proved handy and/or were learned the hard way. 1. When choosing the fabric, pay attention to its color way - the pattern will change beyond all recognition, but the colors will stay the same. 2. For the first stage of the process - identifying your pattern repeat - it's handy to use a tailor's yardstick or any piece of board/plank that has a long straight edge. Alternatively, you can tape together two quilting rulers. 3. Some fabrics have their prints printed straighter than others. Don't be afraid to shift and wiggle your fabric to align the pattern. Once it's aligned, handle it with care to keep it that way. 4. Use flat pins to keep together your six layers while you're cutting. They don't have to be removed from the fabric when they get under the ruler, so your strips will remain aligned and won't shift. 5. Although most tutorials call for cutting 3 3/4 in strips, you don't really have to stick to this number. Measure the width of your repeat - in some fabrics it will not divide by 3 3/4, so to avoid wasting too much of your fabric you can choose a different strip width, say 3 1/2 in of maybe 4 in. Another thing to consider is the scale of your pattern. If it's on the smallish side, decrease the width of your strips. 6. Using a 60 degree triangle ruler with a "blunted" corner saves you a bit of fabric width when cutting the triangles. The blunted corner can also be handy to mark your central corner when piecing the triangles together. However, you don't really need a special ruler for this technique, any ruler with a a 60 degree line on it will do the job too. 7. Make sure your ruler has a horizontal line matching the edge of your strip. If it doesn't, create a line by sticking a piece of tape to the ruler - this will ensure all of the angles in your triangles are 60 degrees, and thus, all of the sides in your triangles are equal. 8. When piecing your triangles keep them in strict order, and always keep the center corners facing one way (for example, away from you) or mark the center corners with a pin, then your piecing process will be fast and smooth. 9. After you've assembled and pressed your half-hexies, keep them together with a piece of masking tape on the back while you're playing with the layout. 10. The layout is a very personal process, but I would still point out two important things - lay out all your blocks to see if there is any "focal" color that really jumps out at you; if there is, start the composition with the blocks that have most of this focal color and create some sort of shape of line with them, then arrange the other blocks around. This is a quilt I made before with the same lilac fabric. I chose to arrange the purple/pink blocks in a sort of wave with the greens supporting the shape. 11. When playing with the layout, snap photos of every variant, even if you don't really like it - the pictures make it easier to evaluate, compare and discuss your layout with other people, you might spot something you can't see up close and personal. On the whole this is a very fast and satisfying technique, definitely worth trying, at least to gain a new perspective on the use of pattern in fabric and the potential of fabrics you probably never considered suitable for quilting. UPD: If you're wondering what came out of that fabric, here's the finally finished quilt Linking up to Tips and Tutorials Tuesday at Quilting Jetgirl

Have you ever made a “One Block Wonder”? To make one you place 6 layers of the same fabric on top of each other lining up the patterns exactly, and then cut them into triangles then sew each group…

I'm using this book as a guideline to making my own one-block wonder quilt. The book has pretty clear instructions, and the photo illustrations are really good. The technique isn't new by any means (anybody remember Stack and Whack by Bethany Reynolds?!) and it uses a ton of fabric, but at least it's just ONE fabric. And there's the beauty of it - one fabric that produces a hundred different blocks. You'll see. Follow along with me..... The fabric I'm using isn't what I would have picked out for myself since I'm not much of a fan of black backgrounds. But I chose this particular fabric with an eye toward my parents' new condo - I think the black with touches of reds, yellows, greens and a hint of blue will go in their new great room really well. I can almost ALWAYS count on finding what I'm looking for at my local quilt shop (Kindred Quilts). Take a good look at the fabric - when it's all said and done, you'll never know that was the base of it all. The following is going to be really abbreviated, for the whole, entire, complete she-bang, you really will have to get the book! The first step is to find the repeats in the pattern of the fabric and, to make hexagons, you'll need to cut 6 (some icky math : hexagon = 6 sides) sections of the fabric. This is why you need some major yardage - I used a little over 4 yards. Carefully stack the 6 sections on top of each other. Use pins to line up the edges by pinning through the exact same place in all six sections. This is the real pain in the butt part - time-consuming, and nitpicky. Haste makes waste. Now that the sections are pinned on all four sides, I carefully lay this out on the cutting board and make the first cut to trim up one edge. I only cut about 1/2". Then I make the first, gulp, real cut. It's a 3 and 3/4" strip from selvage edge to selvage edge. Put a couple pins in the large section and cut another strip. Laying one strip out on the cutting board, I used my equilateral triangle (icky math alert: all 3 sides are equal) ruler and cut the triangle sections out. I have to take the time to pin each section together - after all, I'll have... hmm, I didn't count, but surely more than 70 of these sections, and I sure would hate to drop them and they get all mixed up! I felt like peeking at a couple of the sections. I fanned four of them out to see what the final image will look like. Now that's inspirational!! I can hardly wait - each one of the triangle sections cut from 6 strips will be a slightly different version.

This past Saturday I taught a workshop on the One Block Wonder Technique at the Eastern branch of the Irish Patchwork Society. It was a bu...

Have you ever made a “One Block Wonder”? To make one you place 6 layers of the same fabric on top of each other lining up the patterns exactly, and then cut them into triangles then sew each group…

Kelli has been a HUGE kick to make LOTS of quilts made with recycled shirts. She has tapped into her thrifty sewing self mode. She’s on a mission to cut out about 5 quilts. If you’ve …

I'm using this book as a guideline to making my own one-block wonder quilt. The book has pretty clear instructions, and the photo illustrations are really good. The technique isn't new by any means (anybody remember Stack and Whack by Bethany Reynolds?!) and it uses a ton of fabric, but at least it's just ONE fabric. And there's the beauty of it - one fabric that produces a hundred different blocks. You'll see. Follow along with me..... The fabric I'm using isn't what I would have picked out for myself since I'm not much of a fan of black backgrounds. But I chose this particular fabric with an eye toward my parents' new condo - I think the black with touches of reds, yellows, greens and a hint of blue will go in their new great room really well. I can almost ALWAYS count on finding what I'm looking for at my local quilt shop (Kindred Quilts). Take a good look at the fabric - when it's all said and done, you'll never know that was the base of it all. The following is going to be really abbreviated, for the whole, entire, complete she-bang, you really will have to get the book! The first step is to find the repeats in the pattern of the fabric and, to make hexagons, you'll need to cut 6 (some icky math : hexagon = 6 sides) sections of the fabric. This is why you need some major yardage - I used a little over 4 yards. Carefully stack the 6 sections on top of each other. Use pins to line up the edges by pinning through the exact same place in all six sections. This is the real pain in the butt part - time-consuming, and nitpicky. Haste makes waste. Now that the sections are pinned on all four sides, I carefully lay this out on the cutting board and make the first cut to trim up one edge. I only cut about 1/2". Then I make the first, gulp, real cut. It's a 3 and 3/4" strip from selvage edge to selvage edge. Put a couple pins in the large section and cut another strip. Laying one strip out on the cutting board, I used my equilateral triangle (icky math alert: all 3 sides are equal) ruler and cut the triangle sections out. I have to take the time to pin each section together - after all, I'll have... hmm, I didn't count, but surely more than 70 of these sections, and I sure would hate to drop them and they get all mixed up! I felt like peeking at a couple of the sections. I fanned four of them out to see what the final image will look like. Now that's inspirational!! I can hardly wait - each one of the triangle sections cut from 6 strips will be a slightly different version.

Have you seen some of the wonderfully creative One Block Wonders (OBW) made using precut panels? If you haven’t you should join the Facebook group “One Block Wonder Quilt Forum…

This past weekend I was able to attend a class taught by my local quilt guild. Rebecca’s Reel Quilters offers regular programs, and they are a lot of fun. I get to spend an entire Saturday with my quilting buddies, and we learn a new technique. It is always so much fun to see the … Continue reading One Block Wonder – Guild Class

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One of my favourite things in quilting is hexagon blocks and I just love kaleidoscope blocks. To make a kaleidoscope quilt, you only need fabric with a large print and 6 print repeats. Each block i…

Have you seen some of the wonderfully creative One Block Wonders (OBW) made using precut panels? If you haven’t you should join the Facebook group “One Block Wonder Quilt Forum…

The post you have all been waiting for - fabric selection tips for the OBW QAL! The OBW technique creates a hexagon shape with a kaleid...

So here I am finding myself deciding to do a OBW for a Christmas present. I really don’t have time for this, but I guess I work well under pressure? Anyway, I found this fabric on the sale rack at Olde City Quilt Shop in Burlington, NJ, where I had visited to attend a Kaffe...

I hope you are all having fun trying to decide which fabrics you are going to use for the QAL. There are so many choices, right? Now for some cutting and piecing tips for the OBW QAL I meant for this to be a short post, because the books do a great job of telling you how to layer and cut the fabric; but, I ended up having more to say than I thought! There are several things I want to mention: Use a FRESH blade Cut 30 degree triangles Diversity of triangles Bias edges press all seams OPEN Grouping and layout Pin Use a Fresh Blade This one is pretty straight forward. You have 6 layers of fabric to cut through and a fresh blade is going to make a huge difference. I switched my blade a few weeks ago and thought that would be fresh enough - it wasn't! I had at least one strip with "furry" edges. Trust me. Use a new blade. If you are like me and think your current blade still has some life in it, just put it aside and when your new blade is tired, put that one back in for a different project. (I do not mean to say that your fresh blade will be all tired out after this project. Unless, of course, you are making a really large quilt.) Cut 30 degree triangles My copy of the book doesn't mention this, but I like to start cutting each strip by cutting a 30 degree triangle first. You can check out this little tutorial on cutting 30 degree triangles HERE, if you choose, but the picture below is pretty explanatory. Take your pins out, of course, before making a cut In a way, your first cut is going to mimic this cut anyway, so why not pay attention a little and get a 30 degree triangle that will be the right size to fit your blocks. Having something useful is always better than waste, right? Please make sure you switch sides. If you cut your first strip with the 30 degree triangle positioned like the one above, then make sure your next strip you position the ruler facing the opposite way. It does make a difference! You will need 30 degree triangles going in both directions to finish off the edges of your quilt. What am I talking about? 2 of the edges of your quilt will be straight lines thanks to the straight line piecing outlined in the pattern. But, the other 2 edges of the quilt will be partial hexagons. My book suggests just cutting off these points, but if you have 30 degree triangles, you can add them to these ends to fill out the edges to a straight line. How many 30 degree triangles do you need? Hard to say as it depends on how big your quilt will be, right? Plus each cut will give you six IDENTICAL 30 degree triangles. Having them all be the same will likely not fit your needs unless your quilt is essentially the same color throughout. Diversity of Triangles We already talked a little in the fabric selection post about repeats. When buying your fabric you want to make sure to get at least 6 of the horizontal repeats. It is likely that your fabric also has a vertical repeat. See how many suns I have? Each of my strips is going to have about 2 of the same design elements. Given that, I want to make sure that I don't end up with the same exact triangles. You might notice is this pic, that I like to use a lot more pins along the cut edges of my stack than the book recommends While cutting the triangles down your strip, there are a couple of things you can do to make sure that once you hit this vertical repeat that you aren't cutting identical triangles. It might be that it works out that one triangle will be facing the opposite way. Hooray, this is easy and you don't have to do anything. You can also choose to cut a couple of 30 degree triangles somewhere in the middle of your strip. The extra bit of fabric taken from including the seam allowances of the 30 degree triangles will move you just a little further along the repeat so you won't have identical triangles, and you are still getting something useful out of the cuts. Or you can just slide your ruler along an inch or so and resume cutting triangles. Again, this moves you along the vertical repeat, shifting it enough so that your triangles won't end up the same. What happens if you end up with a bunch of triangles that are pretty much the same anyway? You can orient your hexagons differently, meaning that you choose a different corner of your triangle to be the center. This often gives you hexagons that have a completely different look - a different spin if you will. However, should you choose to do this, you will have to deal with....... Bias edges If you piece your half-hexies differently than with the notched end of your triangles in the center. You are effectively moving the bias edges (that you created when cutting the triangles out of the strips) from the interior of your hexagons to the exterior. What am I talking about and why is this a big deal? I will try to keep it brief.... pink arrows indicate the straight grains of the fabric Because of the way fabric is woven, it has a "straight-grain" going in perpendicular directions, along the selvage and from selvage to selvage. If you look closely at your fabric, you can actually see the little threads going in these directions. There is a slight difference between the two, but it isn't that important to go into right now. The important part is that these straight-grains are less stretchy, and thus more stable if you cut and piece along them. Whenever you cut diagonally to these straight-grains, you are cutting a bias edge, which is much more stretchy. By piecing your half-hexies with the notched edges of the triangles in the center, all of your bias edges are contained within the hexagons, leaving the straight-grained sides to stabilize your rows when you piece them together. Said another way, all of your super-stretchy sides will be contained within each row when you start piecing your half-hexies together with other half-hexies, meaning your quilt will be more stretchy in only one direction. If you piece your hexies with a different triangle point in the center, you will have bias edges between your rows as well, making it stretchy in every direction of your quilt. For you "seasoned" quilters out there, this probably won't be a problem. For you beginners, you might want to minimize the effects of the bias edges by piecing your triangles with the straight-grains on the exterior sides of your hexagons. Press all your seams OPEN Again, this is pretty straight-forward. Press every stinking seam open. When everything is pieced together you are going to have 6 seams converging in lots of places in your quilt top. Even if you plan on just quilting in the ditch, these seams are going to be bulky in these places. The best way to distribute some of that bulk is to press your seams open. Grouping and Layout Once I piece and pin all my half hexies together, I like to group them in to "mostly" colored groups. You can see here, I have a mostly dark group, a mostly green group, a mostly blue group, a mostly light colored group, and a group with a bunch of yellow. No doubt, you will have some hexies that are are tough to place, and these will be good transitional hexies. Now, on your floor or design wall, layout these hexies in their groups. Use those transitional hexies to move from one color to another. There really isn't any right or wrong here. Once you have a rough draft, try to move some hexies around, maybe even splitting up a set (waste not want not) to even out your edges. Now take a picture! Preferably without a cat lying on most of your quilt. Study your picture and decide if there is anything you want to move around. If not, use it as a reference to make sure your rows end up in the order you wanted while piecing them. You can also add in your 30 degree triangles at this point to smooth out those edges. PIN When it comes time to start piecing your rows together, I highly recommend that you pin, A LOT. This is especially important if your hexies have any bias on the exteriors. Perfectly matching up all those points is actually less important than containing some of the stretch. Your quilt will be "busy" enough, so minor imperfections in aligning the seams won't be a big deal, but if one of your bias edges stretches too much, it will be noticeable and may even create a bubble or pleat when it comes to the quilting. That's about it for this post. If you have any additional tips and tricks for the group, leave a comment below or start a thread in the Flickr group. Thanks for reading today! Jen

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This past Saturday I taught a workshop on the One Block Wonder Technique at the Eastern branch of the Irish Patchwork Society. It was a bu...

Get a head start planning your quilt retreats for 2024. I will be at the Strong House inn in Vergennes, Vermont April 25 – 28, 2024. During this 3 day retreat you will learn to: Identify and …

This is one of those quilts that looks so complicated you think you’ll never make one. But nothing could be further from the truth. This type of quilt goes by different names: kaleidoscope, w…