How to Build Mountain QUILT BLOCKS. Medallion Mastery **Session THREE**

in this video we are going to show you how to recombobulate those discombobulated elements [Applause] hi i'm kay england and delighted to be back with you on section three of medallion mastery i think it's kind of fun even if you aren't in the program and you aren't making this quilt to kind of see the options you have in vintage work so we're going to take a little look at three of out of my collection that i think you'll enjoy seeing the very first one you're looking at is a square within a square which that's how when i bought the quilt it was labeled from the dealer that i bought it from and this is an 1830s quilt it's a big quilt it's a 90 something by a hundred and if you look at that big wide striped border you're thinking wow i mean it's every bit of 14 inches maybe even a little bit more but typically a lot of the beds at that time would have had a drop and so my guess is that main body of this was designed for that very purpose this is big and clunky for those of you who think your triangles all have to be two inches folks let me tell you some of these squares are 14 inches or more it is a very valuable quilt and and it's in pretty good shape for the time frame the next quilt is crown medallion and this is my favorite style of medallion work where there's one or more blocks that makes up the center part but then it just builds with different elements first row of flying geese going around it then it's got a border that kind of stops things like the one we're working on then it's got nine patches and then it ends up and this is so weird it actually ends up with flying geese on three sides instead of four so again the only thing that i can surmise from this is this maker made this for a bed and so there would not be a row of flying geese at the top which would be a tuck in or perhaps even the bottom and then the next one is a sampler from the late part of the 19th century and this quilts maybe i think it's 60 by about 80 something like that and it's a center block but i love the way it builds out with borders and pieced elements in my mind i think this must be like many of our quilts today where you guys take lots of classes you end up with an orphan block and you never do anything with it this is the kind of quilt that i would build i love the idea that there's lots of just big plain pieces of border and squares and then all these little orphan blocks just living in there and it's it is just a delightful quilt and one that i am thrilled to own and i don't know if you folks know or not but i'm telling you discombobulated is a word it is a word and you need to study this word because my life is mostly discombobulated on any given day this has been years ago i was flying through the airport in milwaukee and i tell you i walked up on this section in the milwaukee airport that says the recombobulated area up at the top that's what it says so i expect for folks that are discombobulated and fly through the the airport at milwaukee you can go in and recombobulate yourself and i don't think there's charge for this or anything so i spent a little bit of time in there every time i flew through milwaukee i just went in there and got recombobulated and that's what we're going to do with our triangles today is we're going to recombobulate them as you're looking at the quilt behind me the block that i'm talking about is the very last row it's kind of many of you might recognize this as delectable mountain it's referred to that occasionally the method of how we're going to execute it today is not anything i invented i do not know who invented it um i do know that 25 or 30 years ago in the mary ellen seminars we did some of this element some of this work if i know who invented something i am quick to tell you um as far as who got it in print first i don't even know that but it is a slick way of doing a great border or a great quilt now i'm hoping that many of you watching are you're not in the program i'm not hoping that you're not in the program i wish you were but you're probably going i don't know why we watch her we don't get anything so what we're going to do is we are going to give you a killer little handout for making this quilt that i call simply delectable meaning that it's a twist on the delectable mountain style and it's just a method that you can make this we're going to show you how to cut it how to sew it it's free so don't expect a big old glorious handout it's got yardage charts and all that stuff i'm just going to show you how to make one component which is exactly what we're doing in the program is we're making a component we're going to build a border with it you're going to build a quilt with yours we hope you all are liking us and following us and hitting the little subscribe button and all that bunch of stuff if you do you already know where to find stuff we have an icon at the k england.com page we have an icon that says free stuff if it's free folks it's going to live in there you got to click on that and then go in there and hunt based on what you're looking for there's loads of things in there that are free and you can just download them all day long so you'll be looking for a simply delectable and you'll be looking for a little one-page handout that has the size you cut and it shows you how to make one of the mountains then you will decide how many mountains you want and how many rows and blah blah and what kind of border and all that good stuff so let's make a mountain now laying on the table in front of me i have two sewn half square triangle units so i i have sewn these together and now what i have to do is i have to cross cut them and then i'll put it back together again so one of the things that i think is important for you to know and this is on your handout if you own a half square triangle ruler that is seven inches that will cut a seven inch uh unit then that's what you need you need a seven inch unit laying on the table so if you do not have a half square triangle ruler all you need to do is cut a seven and three eighths inch square and cut it in half that's how you make the unit so i'm going to show you how to make one full mountain it takes two half square triangle units to make one mountain and as you looked at the quilt every other row starts with a half a block so when i need only a half a block i only need one triangle of those two colors if you're making it scrappy like mine then i just make some where i only do one of them and that becomes my half block then i make a whole block of two that are mates so i'm going to assume that these are you're going that that makes sense to you and i'm just going to make a mountain out of a pair of half square triangles that i have pre-cut and pre-sewn into half square triangles this is one of the few times that i do press my elements when i start because i want one side to be oppressed one direction and the other side to be pressed the other direction so i just press one to the light one to the dark and i leave them in an orientation that is very similar to a flying geese see how that looks just like a flying geesh unit that's the orientation i want so in this case this is my background and this is going to be my mountain and this is the sky in the background of my mountain you can make this any size you wanted to but the issue is it needs to be divisible by four with easy math now there's probably some mathematician out there that knows how to break this down into whatever those things are called i like quarters halves and holes when i'm trying to do this much repetitive work it's not that i can't do the other folks but it just gets more difficult and i don't know why people like punish themselves i can do most of anything like that but i have found that cut to what simplifies my piecing work and i still get a great quilt and don't have to work as hard so in this case i am looking at a seven inch unit so i happen to have a seven inch ruler i lay it on there that tells me bingo i have got perfectly sewn seven inch laying on the table now i have found as many of these as i have done this is the easiest way for me to do it it's seven i have that element what's half a seven three and a half my first cut is going to be to cut this in half i have found it simpler than trying to cross cut four elements if you cut it in half you only have to half the half that's a song probably so right now i am looking for half of seven is three and a half right there is my three and a half so i'm going to cut that one and then i'm going to take that three and a half inch unit and i'm going to cross cut it into one and three quarters because one and three quarters is half of three and a half so i'm going to do the same thing on this side i'm going to cut a three and a half and then i'm going to cross cut into one and three quarters and be diligent about this because all you've got to do is cut one wrong and then you get to remake another triangle unit okay now i have discombobulated my half square triangles and folks my job now is to recombodulate my half square triangles i think this is more fun and i've done this with smaller elements and i've done it with larger elements just be sure that the math of laying on the table is easy to divide by four i've seen this done with three and i don't think it's near as attractive but that's just a personal opinion so you can do whatever whatever you want to so the key now is how we lay it out okay so now i'm going to start picking up my one on the left and it's going to be the one on the right so it gets laid like this and then i'm going to pick the second one up and it looks like this then the third one looks like this and you notice that i'm turning them every time once you do that also notice that the orientation of these angles runs in the same direction so now what i'm looking for is the mate to this one and it what's on my right now goes to my left i have a brown mountain with my light background i can certainly move those around but let me tell you what dude be real careful about the moving them around because all of a sudden you look like a mountain that had some sort of dynamite issue going on so pay attention to your lights and your darks when you first lay them out that orientation then should be consistent in your assembly method so what i've done now is laid it out and if i needed 50 different sets of these then i would lay them all out on top of each other and just sew pairs pairs pairs so let's sew that i just picked up the first set and i'm going to sew this and again pay attention to the fact that with the camera angle it may actually look like i'm sewing a little heavy quarter of an inch but i'm not it's just the it's the best view for you now i'm going to come back over here and i'm going to pick up set 2 and i'm just working from from to my left you could work the other direction just be consistent and this is where it's important that you sew the same sets together that you cut together because in the event that you were off a little bit this will correct it so now i'm going to go ahead and sew the first pair in the other side and it's the same thing so now what i'm going to do is take the first set that i sewed and i'm going to partner it to its sister set like and always kind of re-look at your direction make sure you've got everything oriented so right here and and if you notice all of these angles are going in the same direction so right now this is my background and this is my main element so i'm going to now join set one together in the same method that we just used and because i pressed my sets opposite each other i don't have to worry about any seam allowance alignment everything just fixes itself now what i have is a left and a right unit every other row is going to start with a half block so if you did you want to make some of your half square triangles in opposite colorings so that you don't have the same thing touching because mine's very scrappy my main quilt and now if i'm joining these two together to form one mountain having pressed these the opposite direction you can see how they're going to nest right there and i'm going to line up here go back to the machine across that first intersection and i just made a mountain now look how cute that is there it is all sewn and in this particular case let's say you went oh i went in my mountain to be the light one well this would be this would be that you'd need another section of him so before you sew it make sure you know what you want to be the darkest mountain and as you look at the picture of my quilt it's very scrappy with mediums and darks and if you were making just two colors this wouldn't be near as much trouble for you to sew but i love the idea that my rows that start with a half block look like that so every other row is going to have a half block starting and ending and then the other row will be a full element so as you assemble that's what you need to decide in your head if you do all of them where they're full rows i think you end up with a lot of clutter but that's just personal now the only other thing let me address for you i typically do not press every unit as i'm working i would wait until i sewed my rows together so like if i'm making the the border that's in the quilt behind me it's a row of these guys that form a border for me and certainly you folks could do that as well but i wait until that row is done before i press i have learned that if you lay out the entire quilt before you press and as the row is done press one row one way and the next row the other way then everything is a slam dunk to sew if you try to press every one of these then you're going to be back and forth to the iron fixing things so my suggestion to you would be be a little lazy with your iron in this department until you get all done then you end up putting borders on it as you please and for those of you who are members of our staycation we'd love to see you post these quilts on the staycation page and we'd certainly love to see you visit us on the medallion page as well we hope that you've enjoyed this little segue into doing a little oddball of an element but honestly it's something we felt when i first did this in the mastery quilt i loved the element so much and i had not used it as a border this way but i also remembered that you folks like to have something free too so i'm hoping that you can get into your stash and if you've got fat quarters or pre-cut pieces left laying around this is a great project for that so we look forward to seeing you on the next video in the meantime stay safe uh happy sewing and we'll catch you later bye bye you

Channel: Kaye England

Views: 816

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: quilt, quilting, patchwork, medallion quilt, sewing, fabric, piecing

Id: R0D8VcQbTsQ

Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021