Hello Quilty Friends!

Happy Thursday to you!

Wow! I can’t believe that it’s been 2 weeks since the end of the Blog Hop. We are still getting all the winners organized, so please be patient with us. I promise, just as soon as all the winners have been notified and we have shipping information, then I can start getting prizes out to winners. It will probably be done in several stages, so hang in there if you have been notified that you are a winner. Thank you!

On another note, are you excited about next week’s eclipse on April 8th? Are you in a place to see it or are you traveling somewhere for viewing? I am very excited that NW Pennsylvania will be able to see it, so all I have to do is step outside and look up. Fingers crossed that it isn’t cloudy — that would be a total disappointment if we all can’t see it. Yes, I did finally get my eclipse-viewing glasses, so I’m all set now.

In celebration of this eclipse, I created my own version of Creative Sewlution’s Eclipses which was one of March’s new patterns. I had to hustle to get the top and photos done for today, but I did manage it. And, boy, am I glad I did — it is an amazing design and I can’t wait to show you how to put it all together!

Didn’t get your Eclipses pattern yet? You can find it HERE as a physical pattern OR you can find it HERE as a digital pattern.

But before we do (sorry about the teaser…), I have one more thing to talk about.

A Teeny Tiny Bit of Quilt Math

Have you ever looked at a big quilt and imagined it as a smaller size so you could use it on a wall? The Eclipses quilt finishes at 59″ x 75″, which is a throw quilt or a REALLY BIG wall quilt. I definitely do not have a big empty wall to hang a quilt of this size, but I really really wanted to make Eclipses.

So, what to do???

Why, I’ll make the quilt smaller so it fits my space! Brilliant!

Have you ever made a quilt smaller or larger than the pattern? There are lots of different ways to alter the size of a quilt, but I thought I’d tell you how I did it with Eclipses.

OH NO — IT’S MATH!!!!!!! RUN!!!!!!!! LOL!

Sorry, couldn’t resist. Teheheh…. You know how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE quilt math!

You can resize most simple quilt patterns by dividing each measurement by whatever fraction you want to make the quilt.

Let’s say I had a 60″ x 60″ quilt with 12″ blocks. No sashing, no borders. Just blocks. Why look, here it is!

Hmmm, that’s just too big. I want to make a nice little wall quilt exactly like the pattern, but half as big. So if the quilt pattern quilt finishes at 60″ x 60″, then I think cutting the dimensions in half to 30″ x 30″ would suit my needs.

So, here’s where the fun begins.

Time to divide all the measurements by 1/2. My 12″ blocks will now finish at 6″. I still need to make the same number of blocks, though, which is 25.

Our repeated block is actually a humble Shoofly block. Isn’t it interesting what happens when you put the blocks side by side without any sashing? Hmmmmmm. Something to play with another day.

There are a couple different ways to figure out the new cutting measurements to make the 6″ finished block.

1. Redraw the block on graph paper
2. Divide the original cutting measurements in half (for example a 4″ square would become a 2″ square)
3. Recreate the quilt in Electric Quilt’s awesome Electric Quilt 8 software and the program will do the math for you!

I don’t usually use graph paper for designing. Most of the time I use a combination of #2 and #3. It also helps if you have some experience with quilt designing.

Shoofly is an easy one to resize, which is why I chose it for this illustration. Because it’s a Nine Patch block, we know that each of the 9 squares in the block will end up being the same size, so we will divide 6″ by 3 (3 squares across, 3 squares down) which equals 2″. Each “square” should finish at 2″. So, we will cut the squares at 2 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ (the 1/2″ is for the seam allowance, so the finished size of the square is 2″ x 2″).

Now what about the Half Square Triangle (HSTs) in each corner? They have to finish at 2″ x 2″ in order to fit properly into the 6″ finished quilt block.

Aha! You do need to know a little bit about quilt math here. Rule of thumb for HSTs is to add 7/8″ to the finished size (to make room for the seam allowance and cutting). So we’ll simply just add 7/8″ to our 2″ finished squares and we get a cutting measurement of 2 7/8″ x 2 7/8″ for our HSTs. Not sure how to sew HSTs? Check out our 2023 Quilt Block Basics Series HERE. Some folks even like to cut their squares a bit larger and then trim them down to the correct size. Do likewise if you prefer.

Something to remember — not all quilts can easily be resized. Who wants to work with pieces that end up needing to be cut 3 5/22″ in size??? Definitely NOT me!

Now that I’ve totally confused you (sorry, not sorry), let’s do the tutorial for Eclipses — the method of construction is the same whether it’s full-sized or mini.

VRD Eclipses Quilt Tutorial

Here are my yummy fabrics for my Eclipses quilt — 1895 Watercolors from Hoffman Fabrics with an 885 Dot rich blue for the background. I love the Dot batik for the background because it actually has little pops of other colors to add lots of interest.

So let’s get started by cutting out all the pieces for the quilt. I do like to cut everything for the blocks before I sew. I save cutting borders until the end if a quilt has borders, though. That way, I don’t have to stop between steps and keep cutting the fabrics I need next. It saves time for me as well as keeping all my pieces organized.

First up is to add yellow/orange “flippy corners” to my grey rectangles. I draw a diagonal line from corner to opposite corner and SEW ON THE LINE. I really like to use my Frixion Pens for this step. I love to have a lot of different pen colors to use on different colors of fabrics — besides, lots of colors just makes me happy. Here, I’m using red.

Trim 1/4″ away from the sewn line. Then open and press.

But wait! We’re not done with our “flippy corner” yet! We’re going to add another, smaller “flippy corner” to our yellow/orange corner.

Uh oh! Now what? I won’t be able to see my red Frixion pen on the blue background. Sadly, there isn’t a white Frixion pen, so I use my trusty Bohn Chalk Pencil, which is white so it will show up on the dark blue background square.

Okay, layer that background square on the yellow/orange corner. Draw a diagonal line from corner to opposite corner and SEW ON THE LINE once again. Trim 1/4″ beyond the line. Then open and press.

Go ahead and repeat for the all of the large grey rectangles on 2 sides.

Moving on, we have MORE “flippy corners to do”. In fact, we have to add “flippy corners” to ALL of the rectangles. Add background corners to the yellow/orange rectangles and yellow/orange rectangles to the narrow grey ones.

Sew the 2 units above together into a block. Repeat for all the narrow rectangles.

Yay! Here’s my favorite part — slapping them up on the design wall and rearranging them until I like what I see. Make sure to follow the diagrams on the pattern so your blocks are lined up correctly. Don’t forget the sashing and side borders.

I like what I see — the orange is distributed nicely and adds a good pop of color. Let’s SEW! I am going to start with the left side of the quilt, but I am taking the left background sashing down until I’m ready for it in a few steps.

I’m going to sew the blocks bottom to top to make a vertical row (which might feel a little weird if you’re used to sewing horizontal rows). Don’t forget to press your row. (One thing I really like about working with batiks is that they press so crisply that I don’t need any pressing spray to flatten them, which saves a bit of time). I am going to go ahead and repeat this step with the right side blocks.

Now I’m going to sew the narrow background sashing strip between my vertical block rows. I’ll look one more time before I start pinning so that everything is lined up.

I like to make a crease in the center of my pieced strip and the sashing strip because it helps keeps things aligned. Then I match up the center creases and put in a pin. Next I pin the ends together and add a few pins in between the center pin and the end pins. This helps to distribute any fullness and make my pieces more plumb.

After pressing the seam towards the background sashing strip, I’m going make a center crease in the right side pieced strip. Then I’ll use those center creases again to line up the right side pieced vertical strip with the narrow background sashing strip. By lining up the center creases again, this will help to make sure both sides of the pieced strips are across from each other and not skewed.

In the photo below you can see how well my blocks are lining up by matching the center creases.

WOW! It’s coming together and starting to look like the cover quilt. Yippee!

Now let’s add wide background sashing strips to the left and the right of my quilt section. Again, crease and line up the centers.

Whew! First section of the quilt is done, now let’s repeat for the right half of the quilt.

Almost there……….now I’m going to sew the right section to the center wide background sashing, creasing those centers and matching them up so everything fits together nicely.

VOILA! Here is my wall quilt sized Eclipses quilt top. I wonder if I can get it finished by Monday the 8th?

I really like how it turned out! What do you think?

Well, that’s it for me this week. I hope you get to see the eclipse on Monday, April 8th. Here’s hoping the skies won’t be cloudy so we can all breathlessly witness time standing still for a moment.

Until next week —

Sew. Laugh. Repeat.

Always,

Tricia @VRD