The last idea for 2-1/2" squares--for now, anyway!

hey everyone karen the warp spinster here welcome to my channel if this is your first time welcome if you've been here before welcome back i'm going to be continuing with ideas for two and a half inch squares i have a lot of them thank you for all of your comments about the two and a half square inch square projects it's been a lot of fun to read them and and good to see what everyone's been doing with two and a half inch squares so today this is another one that's in my head i don't know how it's going to turn out in reality but i'm planning to use the squares i'll create a piece of fabric pieced fabric with these just sewing them all together into a fabric because you know cutting and then sewing together is what we do and then i'm going to use that as the background for a block now i'm going to be using the friendship star because first of all it's my favorite quilt block and second because it's fairly simple i can try this out without a lot of fufura nonsense going on here we have to start out with a little bit of math first to figure out how large a piece of fabric we have to put together here and then i'm going to be using a light gray kind of a taupey gray to go with it for the star points so the friendship star just to review it if you aren't familiar with it is basically a nine patch and it just has half square triangles i have to think about these so i get them oriented correctly you'd think after i'd made 10 000 of these i'd be an expert at it and then that gets filled in so basically these pieces that are just shown as background here are going to be those now these are two inch squares and when i cut the fabric made from these i don't want to be cutting on the seam line that makes that's clear i want to have the pieces larger so that this piece isn't two inches square which i might as well just use a two inch square here but will be larger so that it will have pieced bits in it so i'm going to go for at least making these pieces based on three inches maybe four if i do four then that means i need to cut squares that are four and a half and five let's go with that we i think we'll get a little more variation in the background and this concept of course could be used for any scraps that you put together i have some one and a half inch squares down there i should use one of these days i am using them it's just taking years so uh that means if these are four inch squares this is going to be a 12 inch block finished and i will need these to be four and a half inches so i will need four four and a half inch squares of the background and then two five inch squares of the background and that's because when i'm doing half square triangles this is the way i do it typically there are lots of ways you can do it but i oh i like to make them a little oversized and then cut them down to size so the standard for doing the half square triangles is to cut two squares same size you draw a line diagonally there and then sew a quarter inch scant quarter inch on either side unfold those and then you have the two half square triangles you can also so i cut these if four inches is my finished size i'm going to add an inch to what my finished size is and that's the size i'm going to cut these squares if you don't want to do the whole squaring up thing then you add 7 8 inches to the finished size so instead of two four and a half inch squares you're going to cut 2 4 and 7 8 squares one in the background and one of the star point but i like to have half square triangles that are really accurate so i just up a little bit and then trim it so long way of saying that's why i need two five inch squares and it's only two because each of these yields two half square triangles so these those will be folded up okay you all know how half square triangles work and then so that's of the background fabric and then the square point that the blue star points i'm going to need the same two five inch squares because those get paired up with the background five inch squares and then i'm also going to need one four and a half inch square for the center oh but here's an idea i've got a lot of crumbs left so what if i did a four and a half inch square out of crumbs for the center hmm might give that a try all right all of this was just by way of telling me how many of these i need to put together and it's not going to actually be that many but i want to give myself room if for example i have a bunch of solids here and snuck in a few prints so if i have these together this doesn't have seam allowances of course i want to be able to cut a square like this so that it isn't all centered on one of those so i want to give myself some extra room and these four together would not even give me a four and a half inch square well yes it would actually that would give me exactly four and a half inch square but then i don't think that would be as interesting you could certainly do it i just don't think it would be as interesting so for each four and a half inch square i'm going to want at least a three by three bit of fabric here this is an interesting combination of fabrics isn't it what else have i got i don't want a bright green right next to that green i'm a little more picky about what i'm doing here than i am doing and say the mystery quilt because i don't know where those are going to get end up being together anyway and and i can put blue down here and a red here and i don't know another green down here perhaps so i can sew those together and still give myself an interesting four and a half inch cut out of that but then i could also start on the next four and a half inch cut so i think what i want to do is actually do five by five that's my plan and that will give me probably four of those four and a half inch squares we're going to try it if it's wrong at least i've done it and can tell you that it's wrong so you won't do it so i'm going to do a five by five put that together and i'll be back with you i wanted to come back in for just a minute in the midst of this to describe how i put these things together everywhere from a four patch to 600 a patch or blocks into quilt tops some of you probably already use this method i don't remember from whom i learned it to be honest it was a long time ago but it's very handy for keeping track of things and saving on thread so this was my first my first two columns of five that i just ran through the machine without cutting the threads so they would open up like that and then they're ready for this column i put a pin in the upper left corner always so that i know that's the upper left corner and i'm sure that i'm adding things onto the correct side then i'm just going to open these up i'm leaving them attached i'm going to open them up and then i go back to the machine and as i come to each new square here i'm just going to flip and sew those on and then again i will cut it after i get to the bottom of this column start adding etc etc then when they're all together i can do the rows together this way i know how to pick them up if i have to walk away from this or take it with me to a retreat or whatever then i know exactly the order that it's in and if i can get it to the point where the columns are all joined together then i can easily pack it up because they're already joined so i know how to sew the rows together okay i'll finish and be back again and i apologize if the light gets funky this is and we're wavering between really heavy cloud cover and blinding sunlight so i'm doing my best i hope it's gonna be okay i lied i'm back before i finished i wanted to show you that now i've got all of those columns sewed together i haven't cut the threads in between now i'm going to press them so all of this rose seams go that way or the other way doesn't matter and then just alternate the direction that i'm pressing the seams sew them together and then we'll move on i'm back all pressed ready to go this now measures ten and a half inches square which will be plenty for me to get four four and a half inch squares out of it without cutting right on there so i can move it around a bit not maybe a lot but i can move it around some so that i'm getting so here's one here's four and a half and here's four and a half down here and i want to make sure that i'm not losing any of that difference to seams all right so that looks like it could work here that's going to be five and a half inches from here which will still give me enough over here all right so now i'm going to line up this line here maybe i'll move it a little bit over and make a cut i suppose a good thing to do actually would be to cut this roughly in half first which is essentially what i'm doing here all right i'm just muttering to myself you know talk amongst yourselves if it's if my nonsense is driving you crazy all right that will be enough for both sides and now i can cut this to give me a four and a half inch square wherever i might like it i don't want to cut any more off of there so we'll come off this end because i want bits and pieces of these two and a half inch squares i don't really want any two and a half inch square in there so four and a half would be here and around about there so now i'm going to can't turn my mat all right have my mat stuck down so that i don't i know exactly where the frame is camera frame is if i want this to be four and a half here want to give it enough room over here and i'm going to cut this right here and then trim this to four and a half there's four and a half that's five four and a half now lest you freak out that i am creating all this waste never fear i can use it in my chrome pile in fact i might use that in the center so there's one of my background squares let's do this one four and a half four and a half and go ahead and use whatever your brain however your brain wants to do this i'm just letting you into my wild brain machinations and there's another one now of course i could also do this so that these are the um i think karen the star points the star instead of the background and i still need to do two five inch squares which i will do just the same way oh no i don't need to yes i do yes i do i'm i'm used to this being the main fabric so it would be the star points and i don't know simply put my head is just me whatever let's go here for four and a half four and a half about there another bit for the crumbs pile and now i have i could actually do one of the five inches from here because i'm going to have to do another piece of fabric anyway now let me do one of the fives there we go i'm sitting down trying to cut which is always a challenge for me so now i have three of my four four and a half inch blocks and one of my five so i'm just going to repeat that process with 25 more squares another 5x5 and should be able to cut the rest from that i shall be back when i have got that sheet together i'm back and with a lesson learned that i figured out while i was sewing actually i sort of figured it out i was cutting the last one because these measure ten and a half inches if i need five inch squares of course i have much less room for trimming so that i don't have so many complete two inch finished squares in there i could have when i was doing the four and a half inch squares i could have done just four and a half and five across and that would have given me a little more room instead of having to do fives two fives across i can still do it i need just one more five inch and one more four and a half inch so that gives me some plenty left here actually the second set i could have have done a smaller set here but if i were to do another block for example then that's this would give me a head start on the next block so i need one more five inch and one more four and a half inch so i'm going to take one from the bottom here and one from the top there just so there i guess that really won't be much different i'm mumbling just talk amongst yourselves and ignore me all right this is going to be a 5 incher so i'll give it about like that trim it to five and okay so now i have my two five inch which will be for the points i didn't finish trimming that one so here's i thought that didn't look quite right there are my two five inches those are too little even for a chrome quilt and then i just need a now i'm going to leave this intact for the next block and this one i will trim to four and a half for my other corner piece on the friendship star the friendship star and i are old friends first of all i love the pattern but that was all so my basis for a lot of the alterations i guess block riffs i did and now one of my classes a couple of my classes and so i've gotten to know it quite well still love it so here are my pieces cut for the background now i'm going to cut my star bit which will be for the four points i'm going to do two five inch squares that will be paired up with this so i will do that and come back if i didn't want to do crumb quilting in the middle then i would also cut a four and a half inch square of my star point fabric so i will do that and come back now i have drawn a diagonal line just a pencil line from corner to corner on the wrong side of my star point fabric this light gray that i'm doing and placing it then right sides together with my five inch squares and i put a couple of pins in just to keep it from shifting while i do the stitching and now i'll stitch a scanned quarter inch on both sides of those lines and now i'll be able to cut on that drawn line when i fold this back there's my half square triangle unit and then with each pair of squares you get a pair of half square triangles then i'll press it and trim it square it up to four and a half inches i will use the block lock half square triangle ruler in order to do that if you want to see how i go about that you can check out my video on my five favorite rulers and i've probably used it in other videos as well but i will try to remember to link to the five favorite rulers in the description below and i'm back with my half square triangles all squared up one thing that i did do at first i thought i was going to press toward the pieced background but that was going to create a lot of bulk in some places such as right here where i'm folding back against a a four corner point there that's a lot of bulk even if i press it open that's still a lot of bulk and secondly i like to have the star lift up a little bit from the quilt and visually that happens more for me in my mind anyway that if i press it toward the piece that i want to emphasize more that will visually lift it up off the quilt a little bit so i decided to press it toward the star points but to prevent some of that shadowing through because this is still a fairly i mean it's a good quality fabric but it's lighter than most of my background fabrics so it could shadow through so i just went through and cut a sliver just to sliver off that side of the seam so that that those colors aren't going to shadow through it's not perfect but it gives the effect that i want so i'm doing it that way if you had a darker fabric say lighter fabrics out here and a darker one in there then you would have no problem she wouldn't have to trim the one side of the seam so i am going to now start to lay this out in the form here and i'm having frankly second thoughts about doing the center as crumbs and i'll talk about why in a minute here i have to make sure that i get these turning honestly i've made i don't know how many thousands of these things and i always have to check what i'm doing that can't possibly work karen there we go nope there we are all right so there are my star points here are my corners how much of this you're getting on camera let me pull it up a bit here sorry to make you dizzy and disoriented see most of it now anyway and i like that effect my fear this isn't right yet you were calling to me weren't you saying no karen it's wrong i fear that if i put crumb pieces in here that i'm going to lose the star that it's going to look like there's a hole in the middle of the star so i'm rethinking that and thinking that i do want this gray in the center kind of hurts my heart a little because i like the idea of the crumbs in the middle but i just don't think that's going to work so i'm going to cut a four and a half inch square out of my gray and then just sew this together like a nine patch here's the finished block i like it it's not a typical modern quilt sort of look it's very busy but i like it for its own sake i'm glad i decided not to do the crumb in the center and i'm thinking about how you might make this less busy if you decided to do them you could alternate having this as the background and having it as the star so every other block will rest the eye on the background and then alternating resting the eye on the star you could also just reverse it for the whole quilt and then you've got the the busy stuff happening in the star the star the star of the block i think this could also make a fun kids quilt again i might think about alternating the background and the star fabric you could do sashing in between but i do i like the concept because and it would be interesting to see it in more traditional fabrics darker fabrics here and then uh maybe a sol almost solid read solid fabric here i don't know i i think something more like um kansas troubly sorts of colors not really civil war maybe anyway more traditional fabrics out here um what else might you do you could also alternate maybe do it on point i don't know how i feel about that star on point that's kind of interesting it's a different kind of look and alternate with plain blocks of course you could do that with straight on as well with blocks that match this of course you can always use different colors for the stars in the center it was an interesting exercise i'm glad that i did it and i would think about how i might work this into a quilt it might be kind of fun to do a sampler where it doesn't have to be all stars but do the background with the same process and then use but use different blocks so do a friendship star and i don't know an ohio star probably more simple blocks because if you start cutting these into little pieces then you're going to really end up with some i think possibly less manageable pieces when you start cutting those into smaller beds so that was my exercise for the day it turned out sort of like i had pictured it in my head but not exactly and it's always good to experiment try things out see what you think let me know in the comments if what you would do with this how you might do it differently or how you might put together a multitude of these blocks that's it for today if you enjoyed the video or found a bit of interest or inspiration in it please give it a thumbs up i'll try to remember to link some things in the description do better than i did on the last video and i will see you next time in the meantime be well be happy be quilting peace out [Music] you

Channel: Warped Spinster

Views: 10,758

Rating: 4.8307347 out of 5

Keywords: quilts, quilting, scrap quilting, 2-1/2, squares, quilt stash busting

Id: juw3bvrus0Q

Length: 29min 3sec (1743 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021