Pieced Quilt Backs with Lori Baker

quilters newsletter TV the quilters community is brought to you by handi quilter designed by a quilter for quilters sulky express yourself with sulky and create with confidence brother it's so easy with brother at your side and quilt cut easy fabric cutting for quilters hi welcome to quilters newsletter TV the quilters community I'm mary-kate car petrus and with me is Laurie Baker quilters newsletters creative editor hi Laurie hello how are you today so today we are here to talk about peace backs and specifically your approach to making peace backs peace back sir you know pretty popular they probably always been popular but maybe something people didn't talk about as much as they've been talking about recently right and you've become known in the office on staff for your kind of wacky peace back so not wacky but well we'll talk about it so let's talk a little bit about what we have here in front of us right now okay so this is the back of this quilt and when I start making a pieced back is the the leftover blocks and that's what the four patches are but then I also just used scraps mm-hmm so that's what that portion of it is just scraps sewn together however they fit which is why it's not a joke but this is why you've become known for your peace facts because that is not how you approach your talk oh no you are not an improvisation oh well when it comes to your tops you're very specific and as we've said traditional and you like symmetry and you like all of this stuff yes when it comes to your backs than anything yo yes there are a lot of fun so as we can see as we flip this one over it's a big one so as we can see you know very lovely and symmetrical and sharp nice points and all of that stuff so that's just one example of the difference between one of your backs versus the front right and and here again we just have the pieces of fabric that were the right color that we're in my stash and the leftover things from the front of the quilt and sew them together this is a fun this fabric came out of one of our yes that's right I think he blogged about this I did so again making use of a nice panel print for an easy easy quick quick quick quote yes again we've got the the leftover pieces from the front of the quilt but sometimes I have to sew things together and just they're just flat-out spices in in the parts and pieces of this because I can see here you know you this is sort of that leftover right right nice and and symmetrical and peace but then over here it gets a little off crazy crazy and then if we turn it over we can see again just a nice very symmetrical the one thing about your piece backs is where your love of symmetry comes out is it's the same color scheme yes that's right so we're not really varying the color scheme so much it's more about the piecing correct beautiful this is one of my favorites of when I started getting ready to do the piecing for this back I went through my projects in in process and found some old vintage blocks this one I believe is from the 30s it it was already a placate to the background but it didn't have the center so this kind of orange Center is reproduction fabric the next one is an applique block that I think is from either the 30s or the 40s okay so you didn't make I didn't make either of those blocks they were in my stash and then here's a perfect spot to show you that that the rules don't apply on the but back so then another thing that I don't worry about when I'm making peace backs is whether the points match and are all neat and tidy oh yeah it doesn't matter on the back sometimes that happens thanks off this would never fly oh no tops that's correct I mean this is this corner being cut off that's like a design choice you know you could argue but this is you know you sometimes will see this on people's quilts not that that's ever happened to me but you would never let this fly on them no but on the back again you're just you're not worrying about it you're just making things fit you're making things fit you're almost making your own fabric yes yes that's exactly it is I can art quilt and it's really fun that whole departure from the traditional front yeah exactly well oh this is really lovely let's take a look at the front okay Oh what this one right again I think you you blogged about this yes for the QN blog and just you know a lot of a lot of little pieces going on yes and plus all of this applique this dimensional beautiful thank you though then I can never talk about piece backs without showing this one because it's such a funny story I had made several quilt in this color scheme so I had a huge amount of scraps and started putting them together and there were lots of little pieces so this is a really complicated all sorts of stuff going on yeah and when I got it all done I couldn't stand to put it on the back of a quilt so this is the front of this quilt and it has yardage for the back wow so this is a real departure it is this is pretty unique I would it is among the quilts of yours that I've seen okay well I love it I mean this this this this quilt back top yeah exactly is lovely and gorgeous and you know it's so much fun to have on a bed see up close and be able to really study it yeah well let's take a look at what you've got working on now so you just finished piecing atop right that's correct I'm doing a wedding present for a grandson and I adapted a quilt of Beth get chills from our Modern Quilt si P Modern Quilt yes I need new stands yes change the color scheme change the size a little bit and the top stone now that's beautiful I mean it's just it's spectacular it's it's a different take on it different like you said different color scheme a different layout in a much different size and it's just spectacular and so you finish the top and now you're working on the back exactly own project exactly so let's take a look at your process for that okay that's interests okay so now we're going to take a look at how you're working on and this is actually work in progress right right and you're still dealing with some of your parts and pieces so walk us through your thought process so the first thing I do is gather up all the leftover pieces from the front of the quilt okay actual pieces from the front of the quilt partial blocks blocks that were a little bit the wrong size or colors that I changed my mind and didn't want to use and then I go to my stash and I pull out any fabrics there that are in this right general color scheme okay and that's what we have here we have all these pieces and parts and and a few folds of things that I didn't use on the front but they'll work on the back absolutely this is a you know this is a very narrow strip right here you know it's like a 1 inch strip so there abouts and I see a little bit of Salvage on there but and back it's ok that's that's a great point to bring out I just because I don't like to create the bulk I don't use anything narrower than about an inch because then you wind up having this little tiny piece and seams on both sides is as small as narrow a pieces you're gonna use it yes okay typically okay and once I have that all figured out I start just sewing the little pieces together and I start with the smallest pieces and just start creating blocks of fabric okay so there's one of my little blocks I had oh yes and when you start cutting things to make them fit sometimes they get smaller than they were when you started but again you're not you don't do improvisational quilting except here exactly fun I love it exactly we had a lot of half square triangles left on the front so we've got some pinwheels that will add some color to the outside of and this is a thing I frequently do where I've sewn together two little pieces and then sewed them on a strip of fabric and then just cut them apart and sew that on to the next thing only I kind of try to get the pieces to be closer to the same size this particular set is you know quite a ways off so I'd be wasting three quarters of an inch out there and I'll try to find something that matches closer okay this really is a scrap piecing yes don't want to let anything go to waste here but when I get to this point then I need to even sum things up so I'm going to cut this much off and this big long wine-colored piece will go back in my pile to work with these two pieces will go in the trash and then another thing is that I don't worry about things being straight no so we've got several different grain lines going on it's obviously not a rectangle or a triangle or a square yet so I'll just cut an edge off and add to that straight edge and again the scraps will go back in the pile to be used on the next piece and they'll find their missing piece and it'll all just get built out from there these are colors that weren't in the front of the quilt but they're in the same general family so they'll work once I have those smaller pieces sewn together then I start working on larger pieces thinking about making things work I start aiming for the same general size so you get bigger pieces bigger pieces things that are boring that was just kind of so then I add a little bit of color I loved what happened when I put the black and gray yeah that one it's great now you talked about green line you've got a larger block in here that's really off ground yes I do never put on the front I would not do this this is the straight green on this half of the block and this is the straight green on on the other half of the block so I've got bias edge going on those two sides and on the back of the quilt it'll work my work and you kind of anchor it with larger pieces correct - correct so you've got a large panel it's not even a panel it's a pieced portion another thing that I always do is I go through my projects that are unfinished I taught a class so I've got several step outs of this particular piece and again the colors are right so it seemed like this would be a perfect place to get a fairly big piece of material mm-hmm and put that on the back of the quilt and you've got so we're going to go to over to our design wall now and we're gonna see the partner to this crack and how you're actually gonna use that one in the real back that you're working correct so let's take a look over at our design wall and see where we're going from here sounds good okay cool so here we are at our design wall and we're taking a look at the actual back in progress right that's right okay we have pieces and parts on the design wall but not necessarily where they're going to be and not necessarily a completed block you're just still playing around exactly seeing how things work exactly on walls for so here we have your life nice large appliquéd mirror image of the one we were just looking right on our cutting table and just well he probably live in the middle of the back not in the middle just because I like the surprise of not being centered but but this century okay a couple other things we wanted to talk about is seam lines so you've got a lot of scene lines going on in the back here and some long armors do not like to use pieced backs so if you're going to make a pieced back for your quilt you want to if you send your quilts out by quilted you want to check with your long arm right and make sure that's okay because sometimes just the way I do this I wind up with small pieces and multiple seams in a an area so it does get kind of bulky and you don't know how it's gonna interact with or intersect with what's going on on the tie exactly and like for instance this is an area right here there's a lot of little seamen that's right right in that area that's right and it could cause a problem now do you have any have you ever run into problems when you because you do your own quilting I do my own questioning sharp needle change needles frequently okay alright so and and yeah once in a while you'll have troubles and you have to back up and redo okay just your quilt exactly happy anything else you wanted to talk about I do I wanted to point out this block because I have this great big piece of black and I think it's kind of boring okay so it's probably going to be taken back and and sliced in pieces and put back together with something for a little more color exactly well this is great really looking forward to seeing the whole quilt when it's all put together because I know it's gonna be spectacular and you'll be blogging about it you always blog yeah your quilts in progress I do really good about showing your steps and talking about you know your personal experience so be sure to check the QN blog to see where you stand because you should be finishing this up by this weekend probably so again thank you thank you thanks for joining us and we look forward to seeing you next time on filters newsletter TV the quilters community take care of a bike quilters newsletter TV the quilters community is brought to you by handi quilter designed by a quilter for quilters selkie express yourself with sulky and with confidence brother it's so easy with brother at your side and quilt cut easy fabric cutting for quilters

Channel: Quilting Daily

Views: 25,880

Rating: 4.9160104 out of 5

Keywords: Pieced quilt backs, quilt backs, how to make pieced quilt backs, making pieced quilt backs, improvisational quiltmaking, Lori Baker, Mary Kate Karr-Petras, Quilters Newsletter, QN TV, Quilters Newsletter TV, Quilters Newsletter TV The Quilters Community

Id: h17Vb_omJAk

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2014