Another Idea for 2-1/2" Squares

[Music] hello everyone karen the warp spinster here thanks for dropping by my channel i'm still working with two and a half inch squares because after what i've selected for the block of the month i still have this many squares left these are more my traditional fabrics mostly from that one could go in block of the month pardon me while i pull those out from my days before i was doing a lot of modern quilts so i have plenty here and i want to find another way to start using them up block of the month still going on if you haven't checked that out there's still time to join up you can check out clue one in my previous video but i have something in my head today and i'm going to give it a try right before your eyes that's a little frightening we'll see how it goes so i'm going to grab some of the more traditional squares maybe not those and they'll be deep rich earthy kinds of colors for the most part this was my mom's color palette she loved earth tones so i'm going to go with these and i'm planning to do something similar to what i've done with the half square triangles with this slice and splice thing but i don't want to start out with a square and start doing the slicing and splicing i want it to be a little less fractured than that and not be quite so much work in working with smaller pieces to make larger pieces i want to start out with larger pieces and then go to smaller i'm going to be using at least for this trial some bleached muslin so i want that to contrast with the squares so i'm going to pull out any of the white squares it's all right if the squares have white in them the off-white's okay now i'm thinking should i be doing a cream instead of a white that's quite possible i could do white if i don't do the cream colors let me think about that in the meantime i'll take those out all i'm going to do to begin with is to just start sewing these together in strips and i'm not going to get too fussed about what goes with what hoping the lighting's okay i'm trying to use natural light as much as i can i just don't want to put two of the same pattern right next to each other i'm thinking i need to put in some cream color because i want a little more variety in here that's looking quite somber to me and i'm just going to start sewing those together i'll be back in a couple of minutes when i have done some of those so now i have one strip i'm going to do another strip i you can see i've added in a bright spot here i i don't know how i'm going to feel about that i will need to put some more in to balance that out but i think it'll be all right i want to brighten it up a bit and we'll see so i'm going to do another strip similar and i'll be back i have done a second strip and i have just pressed all the seams in each strip going in one direction i don't think it matters which direction they are i'm pretty sure it doesn't but this is all in my head so we'll see what happens when i actually do it throughout this process i'm going to have lots of decisions i can make and that's the fun thing about it i don't even have to make the same decision from one moment to the next when faced with the same situation oh i will also say that one brighter red piece that i had in here i decided i really wasn't going to like that so i took it out and just swapped it out here and i have a broad range of fabrics here actually some christmas fabrics looks like kansas troubles i've got there's a civil war piece down here this one is actually a more modern one from my friend corinne wells rocky mountain collection so just trying to get kind of the same vibe or feel throughout this now first decision is how many of these strips do i want to put together before i start slicing and splicing just so you know the block of the month is not about slicing and splicing in case it's looking like i'm a one trick pony on this i just really enjoy this process i think i'm going to start out with sewing two of them together and i don't want to for me i don't want to match up these seams because this is just a free-flowing kind of improvisational sort of piece if you would like to match up the seams these seams on both of them are going the same direction i would just flip this around and then when i put those together the seams would butt up against each other in this case those two reds would be together these two would be together not sure i'd be crazy about that anyway what i'm going to do though is to shift this a bit so it's going to be shift slice and splice i guess and i can shift it halfway i can shift it just a little bit i can shift it more [Music] i think about there don't have to be precise i'm going to have some hanging out at the top and the bottom but we'll take care of that later i'm going to stitch these together and i can either press the seams open which is always an option or to one side i think i'm going to go with one side i'll be back in a minute i have indeed pressed this to one side and i have a third decision to make i didn't really specifically state the first one the first decision is how long do i want to make this strip how many squares do i want to use and that's there's no given number i have what about seven here two four six eight here but it doesn't have to be that number you could make them shorter you could make them the full length of the quilt or you can decide as you go you can make them different lengths that's the beauty of this you can just change your mind do it differently do it the same not going to matter so choice number one was how many squares you're going to use in a strip choice number two is how many of these strips you want to put together before you start slicing and splicing i'm going to start with two i don't have to stay with that later on i can put three together i may do some that's just one if you are familiar with my half square triangle videos my stash busting for those you'll know that now i'm just going to slice this and splice in some other fabric i can either go with a a pretty standard sort of angle like 45 30 or 60. and i'll talk about that in a little bit more in just a minute or i can just do a random slice if i do it with a specific angle and i continue with that angle then i can get a very even sort of diagonal look i could get a chevron knit stitch braid kind of look i may do that actually with this this is more traditional fabric and one of my favorite early quilts i made was a pioneer braid and i really like that look so i'm going to give it that look but i could easily do any angle i want and i could change the angle from slice to slice and i'm going to do it in random places on the strip probably two places but i'll do them one at a time i will just make a slice this is at a 45 degree angle right there this is also a good way to practice doing random slicing and cutting like this for improvisational piecing if that's kind of uncomfortable for you you aren't investing in new fabric you've already got these squares now my next decision so this is like decision five this was decision four what kind of angle i'm going to use decision five i guess was how regular i'm going to be about it so this is decision six and that is how wide am i going to make this splice and it doesn't matter and it can change it could be a very narrow splice like that or it could be pretty wide i wouldn't maybe i would go really wide at this point i'm not going to go really wide let's go with about that it doesn't have to be precise i'm probably going to change it i don't imagine i'm going to keep it the same width it just isn't in me the 45 degree angle and let's talk about bias and these angles ideally you are going to have straight of grain along this long edge and particularly the edge of the quilt and the way i'm envisioning it this would be the edge of the quilt if you splice if you do a straight cut for your splice and insert it here then you have straight of grain that's controlling this bias you've created with that slice but you're going to have then a bias edge along here and i'm trying to keep that straight of grain if i had a really wide splice like this then i would be more concerned about that strip of bias on the edge i really want this edge to be well controlled and the the shorter the bias length the the length of your bias edge the easier it is going to be to control it so that you don't stretch it so much so for this narrow i'm not going to be worried about it if i were doing a wide stripe then i would want to have this probably be straight edge which means i would want to cut a strip the width that i need and then do the diagonal cuts like this so i would put my 45 here cut the strip actually the other way wouldn't it 45 here cut the strip so that it's going to you're going to cut this parallelogram here and that will put this straight of grain well let me just cut a slice here so you can see what i mean my apologies i couldn't hear what you said thank you siri he's so polite and this is wider that i would probably use but let's do i've got my 45 degree line lined up with this and it's not going to be long enough for this width of strip but i'm going to cut that and then however wide i want that strip to be let's do it this way so i'm not using all of this up and i'm going to say i don't know how wide i want this to be but let's let's go with say three inches should be enough for you to see what i'm doing let me extend this if i had a 24 inch ruler of course it would have worked better here now if i insert this in here and this is definitely longer than it needs to be of course then i'm doing bias against bias here so i have to be really careful that i'm not stretching when i'm doing this seam a walking foot would be perhaps a good idea here but this is bias here now if i pull on that it stretches and this is straight of grain so that preserves my straight of grain on the outside and i don't have this wider bias piece that i would be more apt to stretch when i'm sewing there so if you're going to do very wide you might want to consider doing that pardon me i have the sneezies fall allergies all right but i'm going to do a fairly narrow one so i can do i think i'm okay with doing a narrower straight piece cut off this selvage edge and then i'll cut myself i don't know maybe an inch wide do i want to finish it an inch probably want it to finish at an inch so let's do inch and a half or thereabouts as long as it's straight i don't care i think i do want it to be an even width i don't want to do any funny cutting at least at this point maybe later on i will but for now i'm just going to splice this in here and now i can start to see whether or not i'm going to like that white as opposed to cream i think it might all be be all right actually so i'm going to sew on the first one and i want to make sure that when i sew it i am going to give it enough room to trim it there so i've got a long enough slice i'm just going to give it a little on each edge and i'll be back when i've sewed that and notice i've got straight of grain against this bias edge which is a good thing it's going to help to control that bias i have pressed the seam toward the darker if i pressed it toward the white it would shadow through too much in general i'm more in favor of pressing toward the splice because it helps to lift it off a little bit but i don't want to do a lot of trimming to avoid that shadow so i'm going to press toward the darker and now it's time to add this on and you'll see i've got lots of choices here about where i'm going to place this and that's the tricky part because once you sew the seam you want this edge to line up and to do that i generally sort of put it about there so that it lines up and that this seam lines up and then flip it over then you can also grab a couple of pins until you get the hang of eyeballing this and put a pin in at a quarter inch you want to go to sew with this pin in so it's all right to put it parallel to the seam here this is just testing your seam it might have a little more nope it's about right now if i pull it back is it going to line up and it isn't quite so i know that i need to shift it a little bit that way and once you do this you'll get the hang of it and you'll be better off you can also just pull it back quarter of an inch see how that's and that looks better so let's give it a go and that turned out pretty well actually lines up quite well i'm running into a really bulky seam intersection there but i think it's going to be all right and you can see my seam lines up pretty well there my edges are going to line up pretty well and now i can trim along that edge i will have that bit of bias on the edge but it's a pretty small stretch of bias i will however remember to be aware of that bias when i am oops sewing these together and there is one splice i can leave it at one splice and go on and do another pair i could go on and do three and do the slice and splice i could make the next one shorter inch in short you could make all kinds of decisions about this all different ways and it will all come together in the end you can piece them together as you would blocks of uneven sizes you could make these into blocks you could keep them as long strips you could do a couple of shorter strips but still pretty long there are all sorts of choices for how you could put this together so i'm going to do a couple more pieces then come back and we'll talk about some decisions going forward with this breaking news i've been rethinking this decision of making sure this lines up for two reasons one is that it takes extra time to do that and i wanted this to be a quick but really fun way of putting these two and a half inch squares together and secondly because i'm using more traditional fabrics i wanted this to have a more traditional look which means that these would be lined up however and especially if you're using more modern fabrics you may wish to just do it sew these together willy-nilly without worrying about matching up these seams and i don't mean willy-nilly in a bad way i like willy-nilly but recognize that you're then going to have to trim that off if you want this to be a straight edge and then you're also going to have to trim that off to compensate so you're going to lose width on this section the strips on this section if i were to do another slice and i'm still staying with the 45 just because that's what i'm doing on my quilt and i may work this into mine somehow or other if i were to put in another slice here and another splice i would want to move this one so that it matches with down here so i'm not slicing off more so for example if i pull this down this direction when i add in the splice then i'm going to be cutting still more off of this edge so i'm already cutting off this much from the previous splice but then i'm going to have to cut off even more so if this slides up this direction then i'm not going to have to it'll be a little more than that i'm not going to have to slice off so much more over on this side so that makes sense so let me put a splice in here and we'll see if that works in reality i have moved this one quite a bit as you can tell and although i have moved it quite a bit i moved it this direction so that when i'm trimming this off it's also what i'm trimming down here so it's less wasted cut off and then over here again i'm cutting off less than if i had slid this piece this direction so i'm going to go ahead and trim this the disadvantage if you consider it a disadvantage and you may not is that these strips are going to be different widths now and narrower you're creating more scraps but probably not of a size you're inclined to use and now i have a more willy-nilly look which is kind of fun might be more appropriate for modern fabrics but i'm already putting a little touch of modern with the white in here isn't exactly trad as the irish would say traditional all right let me put these together just so you can get some idea of how it might look i could also flip it so that i've got the dark next to the light now i could do some of them if i want their traditional braid look and i think i do although i may be changing my mind then i would of course slice some that are going this direction instead of that direction so i get that v shape of course i always have the option which i will probably do to put a sashing in between [Music] the strips so now it looks you could also do if you want to go this direction you could all also make this look sort of like a tree with bro oh you know what would be kind of cool to if you want to use these more traditional fabrics excuse me but save dark browns for hmm for the trunk and the branches so [Music] so i'd have this one going this way i'd have branches going up here branches of different widths and actually after i slice one of these i could then slice and splice again before i put those two together ooh i'm liking that idea so that's possibility maybe what i end up doing i have some [Music] squares in pairs ready to put together another str uh set of eight square the eight square strips and have three of them but i'm kind of rethinking here and i think sorry time out for a coughing fit brought to you by fall allergies i will probably i think i'm going to pursue that tree idea and i well actually this is is going to be okay i can use the dark brown for the trunk i can even use a black if i wanted to or just a really really deep brown and i could still have browns so i might stay away from the really the darker browns at this point blue could be the sky of course i could probably will do more greens for leaves although this is kind of a wintry look isn't it a warm wintry look so maybe more i don't know interesting all right i will do that later if you are wanting to go with something different than the tree option i think this will still show you what ideas you might do you could not do the sashing and just start putting the strips together you could do them with different widths of strips where you've done this willy-nilly and trimmed off the two sides you could combine them excuse me you could start doing different widths here you could do all kinds of funky angles if you're using particularly using modern fabrics or very bright fabrics i think that would work especially well still okay with traditional i'm i'm all right with that or you could put the sashing in you could make these as i said the full length of the quilt and just have a strip quilt or [Music] you could create blocks and they don't have to be blocks of the same size you could sew these together you're of course going to have to square up ends whatever you do if you create blocks you're going to have more ends to square up your blocks don't have to be the same dimensions you can fit them together such as i have done with the in the half square triangles or like you do with orphan blocks there are lots and lots of choices here this this really is kind of a fun effect with the offset here i like that here's what i'm going to do i have these that i was going to put together into a three strip set i think i'm going to try that slice it in the opposite direction opposite direction this is the the correct direction i want and see about doing that splice within a splice see how that looks i'll do it probably which is to to strip with i'll be back talk amongst yourselves here's my plan i have sliced this in the opposite direction so i get that branching idea there and now i want to create a branch off that branch i'm looking at it this way i could have a branch going this way off of it or a branch going that way if i do it this way at this point it's going to run into the trunk anyway i'm going to try it right here and just see how it works i may hate it we don't know and i did that at a random angle so the first piece i need to slice is right here and then i'll splice that cut a piece here to splice and i'll be back of course any time that i splice willy-nilly i need to do some trimming before i splice it back onto here or do i i should perhaps wait until i get that splice in all right i'm going to trim this and get started on the next splice and then i'll be back i am going to have to do a little bit of trimming i didn't go completely willy-nilly on this so i won't need as much trimming as if i had gone a little crazier with that so i want to make sure this is staying somewhat straight and there i have a splice within a splice and of course i could do another splice there if this were our tree i want to go this way nope that's not how a tree looks karen we'll go this way and if i put in the trunk here and of course you may decide you don't want to do a tree at all not entirely sure i will i'm just exploring ideas here and imagine that as dark brown then you have branches going up i might do another branch going up there although i would have to unsew that but that's not a a huge problem if i do that though i have to think about this because if i do that if it goes over to here then that's connected to the trunk so i would almost need to do it and you think like almost straight up there and might best be done at an edge so many things to think about and we now have tried the sub splicing i feel like i'm in a genetics lab or a science fiction movie or something splicing and sub-splicing that's kind of a fun effect again if you're doing modern fabrics that might be a lot of fun to just be slicing willy-nilly splicing willy-nilly things to think about i've spent more time trying this out this morning than i had planned to do but i'm glad that i did because it's been a lot of fun and more options and ideas than were rolling around in my head so i'm glad i sat down and played with it that's the advantage of just taking some time to play with things and with two and a half inch squares coming out of your stash it isn't as if you spent a boatload of money on some yardage and find out that you didn't want to do it that way that's it for me today i'm going to spend some more time playing with this i hope you enjoyed the video i'm i'm glad you joined me for this and i hope i will see you next time if you like the video please give it a thumbs up i also hope that i will see you for the mystery quilt and clue number two will be up should be on sunday so i hope to see you then in the meantime be well be happy be quilting peace out you

Channel: Warped Spinster

Views: 27,089

Rating: 4.5263777 out of 5

Keywords: quilts, quilting, scrap busting, improv quilting, modern quilts, modern quilting

Id: aTHlRBKHdK8

Length: 34min 50sec (2090 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021