Non Mirror Image Combination Units Technique Sheet

[Music] hi everybody welcome to another educational video by studio 180 design my name is zipped up and today we're going to talk about one of our favorite piecing units called the combination unit it's a basic unit that's composed of three triangles in one squared to quarter square triangles and one half square triangle this is a unit that's addressed with the Tucker trimmer tool and the set of instructions and they're quick and they're easy to make but there's something that happens when you follow the instructions that as they're written when you make these units these three triangle units you actually end up with mirror images and you're thinking what am I saying when you make a pair of these units when you put that large triangle in the lower left what you're going to see is you have different colors at the top one of the large triangles in the lower left I have a green triangle at what Popham one and the orange triangle at the top and the other these are mirror image units of each other you can see them when I place them like this some patterns like my Oakridge star pattern require mirror images when you look at this block you have see a combination unit here you see another combination unit here and even on the inside you see more combination units this pattern uses both of those types of Units but occasionally you end up Mint wanting to make a pattern that does not have any mirror images the pin will block like you see behind me has all of the pinwheel spinning the same way so that means that what I'd like to do is make all of this type of unit but I don't want to make any of this type of unit the technique sheets that we've developed the non mirror image combination unit is going to help you do that every single time with the units that you exactly want to have when I go to make this unit this is the unit that I actually want to make what I'll need to start with are four squares and the four squares that I start with contain the colors that I'm going to use I need two squares that are going to be cut for the quarter square triangles and I need two squares that are going to be cut the same for the half square triangles and these four starting squares are going to give me four of this unit I'm going to move this one out of the way since that's not the one we want to make and this is how we go about constructing these all the same it's similar to what we've done in the past but it's again slightly different so what the first step take the two squares that are going to become your quarter square triangles I'll keep this in sight so we can kind of see what's happening here the two squares that are going to be the quarter-square triangle you're going to take the two squares place them right sides together and what you're going to do before you do any marking on here is to determine which color you want on the top of your unit so when you set your unit up set it up so that the large triangle you only have one of those in every block every unit the large triangle is in the lower left-hand corner take a look at what is at the top if the green is on the top furthest away from you you want to be placing your squares with the green on top if you were making the other unit with the large triangle in the lower left the orange would be on top I would put the orange on top so we're making this unit so I'm going to move this one out of the way large triangle lower left square that I want on top is the green and I'm going to place my green square on top the next thing that I have to do at the mark these and I'm going to have to cut these and what I'm going to do with the stack of quarter square triangles the orange and the green I'm going to mark four lines and those four lines are going to go to on one diagonal and two on the other bag and the diagonal lines are going to be a quarter of an inch from the true diagonal my favorite way to mark those lines is to use my quilters magic wand it's got a laser line that goes right down the middle that allows me to place it right on the point I can then use a marking tool of choice my favorite choices are either a regular click pencil or a permanent pigma pen both of them make nice fine lines the permanent pen I know will never come out but the nice thing is it gives me a fine line and I like to use them both interchangeably but when I use the quilters magic wand when I mark those lines I'll mark in this direction pick my ruler up and Mark in the other direction so that when I'm done with my pair what I've got is the pair of squares marked with two diagonals a quarter of an inch from the center what will be the large triangle to half square triangles squares I'm going to take those squares and I can do them together if I want to I'm simply going to cut those in half to end up creating four of those half square triangle shapes and put those on hold for right now and come back to these when I go to stitch the piste quarter-square triangle sections and I go to put this underneath my sewing needle I'm not going to stitch on all the lines what I'm going to do is stitch down one of the lines go to about the halfway point cross over and stitch down the other line and it's here where you really need to pay attention because sometimes you can stitch down the right come across and stitch down some people want to come down the left stitch across and come down we always always always want you to come down the right stitch across and come down this way so that your stitching looks just like this comes down across comes over you'll rotate your unit and do the same thing on the other side come down the right come across the middle and come down the opposite side so you're making this kind of cross stitching thing if those crosses happen right in the middle that's great if they don't it's not a problem because after you've made this stitching arrangement down across and over twice once in in each direction the next thing we're going to do is actually cut those apart on those two diagonals I just use a regular ruler to do that grab my glasses here so I can make sure to do a good job I'll move this one out of the way for just a minute and we're going to take put a regular ruler edge of the ruler on this point cut in this direction I can rotate the whole thing if I want to it misses the stitching in the middle but that doesn't matter rotate this I can need to cut them one at a time or I can keep them fairly close but what I'm going to end up with when I do that cutting or sewn half square triangle units so I've got and they're all sewn exactly the same way once there's once they're stitched what you're going to do is head off to press them you can press them in either direction you can press them open if you want to but you're going to take those pieces and you're going to now be able to team them up to start to make the unit that we want to make so we've got four of those we will have four of these we're going to piece them the old-fashioned way we're going to take these two which are now half square triangles and stitch them together when I go to do the stitching I'll take one of the large triangles place it together with one of the piece triangles now the piece triangle is going to be smaller and that's okay but what I want to do is essentially line up the raw edges and come and stitches now chain piece those one after the other after the other on my sewing machine once I've done that step what you can see immediately what's going to happen I've done those stitching magically by the power of television done the stitching and when I open them up now what I've got are all my units exactly the same orientation as the original piece that I wanted to work with pressing here is a choice again generally we press toward the larger triangle but it doesn't have to if it works better for your block you can press any other direction these are oversized the sizes of the squares that you use when you follow the set of instructions on the UM the technique sheet will make these slightly bigger than they need to be and this is where the Tucker tremor comes into play this is the perfect tool to trim down this unit at the beginning I decided I was making four-inch units and that's the finished size which means that I need to trim this unit to four and a half inches using the Tucker trimmer because I'm trimming just something and a half and I'm right-handed I put the half circle and the quarter square triangles in my upper right hand corner and that's going to allow me to place two lines of the tool onto the piece unit the common diagonal will go on the short scene and I'm trimming this to four and a half inches to the four and a half inch diagonal will go on the opposite scene that's how I would do it for right-handed if you happen to be left-handed when you do the trimming you simply rotate your shapes put your quarter square triangles in the upper left put your half circle in the upper left so that when you place those shapes on there those lines on the seam lines you'll be easily able to trim this and clean it up but I'm going to show you the trimming just so if you've never seen the tucker trimmer it's a valuable tool you should have it in your toolbox I have it on my mat every time I go to my sewing table I'm lining up two guidelines with two seam lines I'm lining up the common diagonal here the size I'm coming to block two here four and a half inches I'll trim up interm across what you can see after the trim is I've got a square corner with very little waste in it in the process list the tool rotate the unit 180 degrees drop the tool back down look again at the same lines I'm looking at the common diagonal on the short seam the size I'm trimming it to four and a half inches on the long scene and I'm also now paying attention to the cleanup line that's going to ensure that when I'm done I have a square and I have a square that is exactly the right size and not only are these exactly the right size but every seam is placed where it needs to be so that I've got a perfect unit to give me better success and a whole lot less stress when I go to put my pieces together so if you've got this unit in any of your future projects head out pick up the Tucker trimmer you're going to use it it's the perfect tool to be able to make this this specific unit but also pick up our non mirror-image combination unit technique this technique sheet will slowly easily talk you step-by-step through all the process I love this shape there's lots of things you can use it and once you know what you're looking at you're going to see it in all kinds of patterns good luck finding that at your local quilt shop I check there first if they don't have it please visit our website Studio 180 to design dotnet and we'll set you up and get you off and running

Channel: Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design

Views: 38,499

Rating: 4.9328165 out of 5

Keywords: Studio 180 Design, Deb Tucker, Deb Tucker's Studio 180 Design, Studio 180, Quilting, Quilts, Quilt, Piecing, Piecework, Modern Quilting, Traditional Quilting, Tucker Trimmer, Half Square Triangles

Id: B_6CMBug1aM

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 12 2017