Thursday, May 31, 2007

In the True Spirit of Whiplash

I had an utterly amazing time participating in the doll quilt swap of late so I was thrilled to see this most recent challenge at Whiplash: miniature quilts! That's so great! Except that I didn't find out about it until two days ago and it must be posted by today! But did I let that dampen my creative spirits? Of course not! So, in the true spirit of the site, I have whipped up a small quilt as fast as I could and...voila!Let's call it "Confetti".

I wanted a quilt with a similar feel to this wip but with much less handwork. So I decided on small squares and rectangles instead of circles and a very random arrangement rather than the gentle dispersing look of the bubbles.
To start, I took a big old stack of fabric (all cotton), trying to have a balanced variety of color and brightness, favoring simple patterns and solids over anything too crazy.
Next, I cut one small square or rectangle out of each different fabric. The sides of the pieces were no smaller than 1", no larger than 2".
Then I used a rotary cutter to cut several strips of white fabric, 1" being the thinnest and 2" the thickest.
Now, to the sewing machine! I sewed each colored piece onto the long white strips, right sides together, adding each piece as I fed the strip through the machine. It doesn't matter how the pieces are oriented or to what width strip they are sewn. I wanted things to be as random as possible. When I was done sewing I had a nice little banner of flags like so:
Laying the strip white-side down on my ironing board, I pressed the colored flags back so that the seam allowances are all pressed towards the colored piece. Once everything is ironed, I snipped the pieces apart.
Now repeat the process of sewing the blocks to the white strips, being sure to sew one of the colored sides to the strip, not the side that is all white.
Iron again, snip apart again.
Now do the whole thing one more time so that all of your blocks have three sides that are solid white and one side with a bit of color.Next I took all of my pieces and treated them like a puzzle, trying to fit them together in rows so that all of the colored blocks are surrounded by white. I didn't try to make everything match up exactly.

*Update* For this part of the quilt you have to be a little creative. Your "puzzle pieces" won't fit together perfectly so trim as necessary. You may want to sew some smaller pieces together and press before piecing them in a row. Feel free to add bits of white to fill in empty spaces and don't be afraid to go back and make a few more colored blocks if you think that you need them. This is a real free form way of quilting. You have to do a little bit of thinking and figuring to get everything to fit together. Don't worry...that's normal!

After each row was sewn together I squared things up as necessary.
Once I was satisfied with my rows I sewed them all together then added a border of white.
I used the "birthing" method instead of binding the quilt. Once that was done I machine quilted around each colored piece.
Done.


whipup

35 comments:

  1. This is inspiring, though it took me moment to understand your way of piecing :-), Love it and will try with all red & white fabric...

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  2. Anonymous6:49 AM

    What a fun quilt! I hope you win the Whiplash contest. Thanks for the tut! Makes me want to make one. I have tons and gobs of little strips and squares laying around and this looks like a great way to get them into a quilt and out of my scrap box. Enjoyed reading through all of your quilty posts. Really like the bubble quilt!

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  3. Anonymous7:04 AM

    This is a great post. I love your confetti quilt (saw it in the flickr quilts & quilting pool) and i was wondering how you made it. thanks for posting instructions~

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  4. That looks gorgeous! I will have to give that method a try sometime.

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  5. So cute..without being too cute, does that make sense? Too much coffee this morning, anyway..I love it!

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  6. this is too cool! thanks for sharing how you pieced it, too.

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  7. Anonymous2:35 PM

    It's completely beautiful! Thanks so much for sharing your process!

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  8. Anonymous10:57 PM

    This is really wonderful! Thanks so much for sharing the process.

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  9. Anonymous2:49 PM

    beautiful! thanks for sharing how you made it. I have a bunch of scraps that would work perfectly for this.

    amandajean

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  10. Wonderful! Wonderful!

    I just laughed out loud at your category for this post :oD

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  11. your quilt is so great! i want to try my hand at one *right now* but my sewing machine died last night & i don't have the patience (nor time - supposed to be studying) to handpiece/quilt :(
    but thanks for the instructions - rest assured that when i do have time, i'll be whipping one up of my own.

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  12. I LOVED this! And what a great way to sew it all together!

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  13. I really like this quilt and appreciate your including a tutorial, sometimes it can be so difficult for me to break down how something is put together.

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  14. Anonymous7:36 PM

    I want to go make this quilt right this second, but I better put in just a teensy bit of work on the projects that are time sensitive first, and then I can make one. I always love reading your blog, and I've posted a link to this post and tutorial on my own blog. Hope that's OK.

    Melissa

    Oh, and half-assed is better than no ass at all, I think.

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  15. What a cute quilt! I love the randomness, and you did a great job in arranging it in a not too chaotic way! Your quilt makes me smile, it almost makes me want to try making one myself (but I'm pretty sure I won't be ready for that for at leat ten more years...)

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  16. Anonymous7:29 AM

    Thanks for sharing your piecing technique - that's a great technique for scraps small or large. Your quilt it playful and wonderful.

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  17. neat - any half-assed tutorials for the "roots" quilt?

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  18. Thanks for your generosity in posting the tutorial.

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  19. What a stunning and beautiful quilt! And what a great use for all those little scraps that are so hard to part with! VERY inspiring!!!!

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  20. Great qulit and really good instructions. thanks!

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  21. Anonymous8:32 PM

    I have never done one this way and I may use it for The Doll Quilt Challenge Group theme for July with a link to this post if you don't mind. Let me know, ok? This is a brilliant quilt with a simple, clean, killer contrast! I know eevryone will love trying it!

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  22. Ah, so behind on by blogs, but I just wanted to let you know that I loooove this, and am so happy you posted the tutorial for it! Thank you thank you!

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  23. This is brilliant!!! Bravo! I might actually be able to do something like this. Thanks.

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  24. Oh and that birthing method...so perfect for the beginner quilter.

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  25. I followed your good directions and made one for the July Doll Quilt Challenge. It was a good challenge and I learned a lot. I used truly July patriotic prints & reads-as-solid fabrics. I don't know how to leave links in comments, but my version, as yet unquilted can be seen in my Flickr photos. I am in process of moving and all my stash is in storage. As a result I have nothing except muslin to back this doll quilt. I don't want to quilt it until I make a fabric run to see if I can find something besides muslin!

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  26. thank you for posting the "birthing" technique for finishing the quilt. that has been the part that's keeping me from starting my quilt but now this will be easier to handle with hand sewing!

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  27. lady harvatine:

    you're just wonderful.

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  28. Liz, Calico at Amy just had a link to this post. I am new to your blog, but this is a beautiful quilt. Thanks for sharing the directions. I might just have to make this one!

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  29. This is FANTSTIC!!!! I'm all about half-assed tutorials. They're just my style. I saw this, and knew what I had to do with my recent stash of newly painted fabric bits. MMMM!!

    I had 2 hours to myself, and got all the way to the point I'm ready to decide where each square will go on the quilt.
    When I get another couple hours free, I should be able to get them together, another 2 and I'm done.

    I LOVE it!!

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  30. Anonymous10:00 AM

    This is one technique that I would really like to try. Thanks!

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  31. Es muy original y bastante facil de hacer enhorabuena, el resultado es excelente. Un beso

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  32. Anonymous2:02 PM

    thanks for sharing this!! I'll try...

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  33. I saw this last week and whipped one together! I don't know if I can show you here, but I've got a photo on my blogsite:

    Thanks for sharing this one--I'm going to make another with black background and only very bright fabrics.

    http://susan-my2cents.blogspot.com

    Susan

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  34. I've so admired this quilt since you posted this tutorial and I finally made one the other day. I used a black background. I posted on my blog if you'd like to read about it.

    http://knitonequilttoo.typepad.com/knit_one_quilt_too/2009/06/confetti-quilt.html

    Thanks!

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  35. Question- once sewn, the smallest would only be 1/2" x 1/2" ?????? Since you only cut them at 1" square? Is that correct? Or should we add a seam allowance when we cut?

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