Template-Free Kaleidoscope Puzzle Quilts Part 1

hi I'm Maggie ball traveling Corp teacher and author and today I would like to share with you my new template free kaleidoscope technique you can see from this Court behind me that it's made up of 25 kaleidoscope blocks here in the center you can see the kaleidoscope really clearly usually we need templates to cut these kite shape and wedge-shaped pieces for these quilts but no more I've devised a very simple technique for doing this using the tools that you already have no triangular rulers required the idea is very simple you set up a 10-inch frame of masking tape on your cutting mat and then I've made marks 3 inches from each corner so from every corner count up 3 inches make a little mark and then I've numbered these marks because this is how we're going to make the cuts we're going to put 10 inch squares of fabric inside the frame like this 10 inches is very convenient because you get four across one full width of fabric and then the cuts go across so the number one cut will go diagonally to the other side of the square and you want to put your ruler down so that you're right on that point where the mark is at the edge of the square when you make the cut if your layers come apart slightly sometimes they come open a little bit just nudge them back together again now you can make your number two cut when you go to number two across to the other side again we're getting our ruler so that it's right by this little edge on the inside of the frame if you're number two cut number three goes across like this and the number four cup is the last one here what you get is four kites and four wedges of fabric from each square and you can stack four squares at a time up to cut so you'll each block is made of four kites and four wedges and when you put them together you're always going to put the wedge on top of the kite so match up the point in the center and match up the raw edge on the right hand side and you can see that the kite is actually a little bit larger than the wedge and that's fine always feed it into your sewing machine in this way with the point leading so that the center will be really accurate for each block we have two pairs of kites and wedges we're going to put these pairs together and you want to match these seams you can stitch again from the center out towards the edge you want to make the center really accurate so to do this we're going to put the two halves together and I'm going to take my pin and put it straight down right through where these little points intersect and then I'm going to do the same on the other half the pin is holding everything in the right place here and I want to stitch all the way through this intersecting point so the next step is to trim the block to make it even we're trimming it to eight-and-a-half inches my four and a quarter is in the center here my diagonal goes through this corner down here and out here I'm going to cut side and the top now I'm going to turn the block around and eight and a half inches eight and a half inches here and here and the center is still on four and a quarter here will trim this block up as you can see there's very little wastage here just maybe quarter of an inch off the kites and a little thin sliver off the wedge so we're wasting very little fabric and from a 10-inch start we end up with an eight and a half inch block when it's time to join blocks together it's very easy because these seams actually match on the raw edge so you put your block right sides together and I like to pin so this seam right here exactly matches this scene and this one matches this as you've seen from the demonstration it's very easy to cut the pieces for these blocks and also to piece the blocks together very economical on fabric and it's fun to do I recommend that you experiment by cutting up a bunch of different fabrics and designing your own quilt this one is five by five for 25 blocks you can see the kaleidoscope block in the center where I just use two fabrics and then the design builds so it's fun to play on your design board and do your own thing if you do a four by four here you can see that there's a star in the middle so the patterns vary enormously and you can have great fun experimenting watch part two for instructions on making kaleidoscope puzzle quilts with the blocks on point and watch op-art kaleidoscope quilts to see how this technique may be further developed to make a new quilt block visit my online store at dragonfly quilts com2 just patents immediately available as downloadable PDFs or they may be sent to you by snail mail happy quilting

Channel: Maggie Ball

Views: 73,527

Rating: 4.9316239 out of 5

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Id: t1uySnPrPRw

Length: 6min 23sec (383 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2013