Half Square Triangle cushion covers - all done!

Part 2 of the making my half square triangle cushion covers. Once again I experimented with the turquoise cushion cover first…so this means the purple one should be mistake free … in theory! 

The front of the cushion I finished off like a mini quilt without the binding before making this into a full cushion cover.

For the 'mini quilt':

I used leftover sheeting scraps as the backing for the mini cushion quilt and a few smaller pieces of batting lined up alongside each other. 

backing fabric taped to floor & first piece of batting laid over this (I didn’t bother stitching the batting pieces together for such a small project)

 Then, as for any other quilt, place the top fabric on, pin through all 3 layers....

...and quilt away.  As I decided not to take the quilting all the way to the edge of the cover, I also used a long straight stitch to baste close to the edge of the cover to hold backing, batting and top layer neatly together.

Trim away excess batting & backing.

For the cushion backing:

My cushion measured 22” square.

Cut 2 rectangles of fabric 22” x 16”. Square these up well as they will then help square off the quilted front.

Take one rectangle (A) and along the short edge turn over ½ inch, press and then turn over another ½-1” and press again to hide the raw edge. Stitch to hold in place.

For the second rectangle (B), again turn over and iron approx 1/2” along the short edge. Then, turn over another 3” (or a little more) and press again. I didn’t stitch this second seam for this cushion, but I will next time.

Piece (A) with raw edge hidden and stitched in approx 1” seam. Piece (B) with ironed first seam and arrow pointing the (open) pressed 3” line

To assemble the cushion cover:
Place the quilted piece face up. Place backing piece B right side down as shown, matching raw edges to quilted piece (or placing squarely over top of quilted piece if the quilted piece isn’t properly square) and pin together.

 

Lay backing piece A right side down, overlapping where the cushion insert opening will be, and lining up with backing piece B where they overlap to keep square. Pin.

Sew front to back around all four edges, reinforcing at opening (where piece A & B overlap).

Trim excess batting etc and clip corners before turning right side out....

...and stuffing.

Half square triangle cushion cover - Part 1

Half square triangles. Mmmm, every blog I read before I attempted my ‘HST’s’ made it appear these are easy. And perhaps they are…if you have measured perfectly, and cut just so, and sewn your ¼ inch seam with accuracy. But I can speak from experience & say that I for one am not so good at getting all three of those steps to work as well as perhaps they should. And that leads to half square triangles that don’t align perfectly in the corners. And that can be a little frustrating to say the least!

Thankfully I decided to start with a small project – a cushion cover – rather than a whole quilt. 

I wanted to use up some of my 5" charm square stash for these projects, matched to a coordinating plain fabric. Each cover ended up using 12 full charm squares and part of one extra square. I used the technique where you sew all the way around 2 squares with right sides together and then cut 2 diagonal lines to get 4 half square triangle squares.

The turquoise cover was my first attempt & I learnt a lot - even the second half of the turquoise cover has better aligning seams than the first, so I am optimistic that the second cushion cover in purple (using the same pattern) will be much improved technique wise.

There are plenty of blogs stepping through how to cut half square triangles, so I won’t reinvent that wheel. But I am going to jot down some of the key things I didn't find out readily from the net, and instead worked out through trial and error (with a few mutterings under my breath from time to time!!).

Cut 12 x (5 1/8”) squares from coordinating plain fabric (plus make one extra square). My charm squares never seem to be perfectly 5” or perfectly square, so I decided to cut the plain fabric squares at 5 1/8” to give me a bit of breathing space when stitching together. 

Place a charm square on top of a plain fabric square & stitch all the way around. I found it best to start stitching part way down one side (rather than in a corner) to avoid puckering where the stitching meets. And it was worth taking time to get the ¼” spacing accurate at each corner - sometimes I shortened the stitch length towards the corner to help with that.

 Cut from corner to corner to end up with 4 pieces as shown, Ideally these cut lines will be at a 45 degree angle to the sewn straight joining seams. Ideally!

Then open and press each triangle to get the HST squares. 

                                

 The first big mistake I made with the turqoise cushion was deciding not to square up until I had sewn 4 squares together into a 2x2 block. Botheration & bollocks. For the purple cover I squares up the individual squares first & that worked way better. 

I lined up my 45 degree andgle on the ruler with the seam and then trimmed down the first 2 edges (right and top), making sure I still had room to trim when I turned to square up the final two edges (in my case 3 1/8")

Next, spin the square around, line up the angle line again as well as the 3 1/8" size markers on the edge and cut the square to the size you want.

Once all the squares were sewn, squared up and pressed  I decide on the design & took the all important picture.

I guess ideally I would have had an even number of squares but the size of the cushion needing covering dictated a 7x7 square cover. I worked in rows, sewing adjoining squares into pairs. When pressing I made sure to alternate seams either pressed to the left or right. This helped when then sewing up the 2x2 blocks.

This picture shows the pressed seams facing left and right while I sew together. Nestling them at the seam helped to get a good result. I do still wonder though if pressing open would be better with this pattern given you end up with so many seams where all the pieces meet.

Here is the work in progress (from bottom right working to the left). 2x2 completed blocks, adjoining pairs sewn together, adjoining pairs waiting to be sewn together etc.... And the trusty computer screen showing the design so I don't stuff up & have to unpick!!

A bit further along the way of joining squares together...

The final seam. I did find that once I was sewing more than 3/4 squares together in one go that pinning at the seams was definitely worth it to get good alignment.

Da da!

It's interesting that this is almost the same design as the turquoise one, but I like it so much more. Not because of the colours, but the fact the central square has the patterned fabric rather than the solid seems to work so much better.

Now the more tedious task of making them into cushion covers begins....

Library Bag

Another hiatus. Been way too long since I was in the Button room. Lots of other life stuff happening in the last few months. The few times I have managed to get in there I haven't managed a whole lot. I need a few big chunks of time to get in the creative groove!

A crafty catch up with a talented sewer friend last week helped me get things happening again. A few little dresses finished off over the weekend, and a nothing too fancy library bag for school.

Like so:

Finished size - approx 16" x 12" plus handle.

Basic How To:

Cut 2 rectangles (16.5" x 12.5") from each of the outer fabric and lining fabric.
If you want to embellish the outside with a name or anything else, now is the time to do that before you start to sew things together.
Next, place outer fabric rectangles right side together & stitch around 2 sides and base (leaving top edge open).
Place lining fabric rectangles right sides together & stitch around 2 sides and base (again, leaving top edge open) - making sure to leave a 3" gap in the base (for turning right side out later on).
Then sew boxed corners into each corner of the lining and outer bag pieces - I measured 1.5" in from each corner to make these. This will make sure there is a bit of space for books inside the bag.

At this point I also added velcro to the top edge of the lining of the bag.

Handles - I decided to make two small handles, one for each side of the bag. I only had felt to hand to reinforce the handles, so that is what I used.
Cut 2 felt pieces (1.5" x 15").
Cut fabric to cover the handles 2x (5" x 15")
fold over about 1cm and press a fold along both long edges of the fabric handle pieces. Place the felt along the fabric, roughly one third of the way down and then fold over the fabric (top down and bottom up) to cover the felt. Straight stitch the length of the handle, just near the edge of the fold to hold everything in place. I posisioned the fold so that it was abouth a third of the way down, so that when I then ran another line of straight stitching a third of the way up the spacing looked good.

Here you can see the right side (top) and wrong side (bottom) of the handles:

To assemble the bag:

Turn lining right side out and then slip inside outer bag (that is still inside out) so that the right sides of both fabrics are facing each other. Match the side seams at the top opening and pin together.

Pin each handle in place to the lining fabric, using the velcro as a guide for centre placement. Make sure the right side of the handle is facing the outer fabric (this will mean when you turn the bag right side out you don't see the folded edge on the 'wrong side' of the handle).

Then pin the outer fabric and lining together, matching the top edge as you go. Repeat the process for the other side of the bag, adding the handle and pinning along the top edge.

Then straight stitch along the top of the bag - all the way around. Trim excess handle fabric and then turn bag right side out through the opening you left in the base of the lining. Press the hole in the lining so that the edges are neat and then straight stitch close to the edge to close the hole.

Top stitch along the top edge of the bag - this will keep the lining neatly inside & also reinforces the handles.

Done!

Crazy Nine Patch Quilt

Before I left for Cambodia I managed to finish off another baby quilt. Having a deadline helped that along - it needed to get to Melbourne & Husband was headed there just after I returned.

I started off by selecting the 9 fabrics to make up the crazy nine patch squares. The pattern & how to make these can be found at Oh, Fransson!

The end size of the crazy 9-patch blocks was dictated by the fact some of the initial squares were from a layer cake & therefore only 10 x 10 inches. Just having 9 smallish crazy blocks floating on the quilt top didn't look good, so then came all the umming and aahing as I played around with different designs & combinations...until...drum roll...
The plan was that it would look something like this. Kind of.

First up I strip joined rows of 9-patch blocks together like so:

 And so:

...to end up with one big 3x3 crazy block.

I also fussy cut the nine 2.5 x 2.5 inch squares from the animal print fabric that were also going to go on the quilt front. I use a clear plastic template I've made to work out where to cut (the inner line on the template shows where the seam line will end up.

Or line up my quilting ruler using the template on top

I find one of the easiest ways for me to work out which bit of quilt to join together first is to chalk out the edges on my sewing room floor & then place out where I want things & measure in between to work out what sizes I need to cut, and how things will end up piecing together. Here I have the finished big block & am working out the spaces between the fussy cut animal squares, the big square and the quilt edges.

I ended up deciding a pop of purple was needed between the small animal squares, So this is what I did next, strip joining the 2 rows of animals with the purple. Now the floor begins to resemble the rantings of a crazy woman - numbers and symbols scrawled everywhere!

There is method in my madness (for me anyway!) & slowly the other sections of fabric are cut and joined together in order:

The Quilt back.
I had a big strip of the animal print left, so wanted to use as much of that as I could.
A small square managed to use up some more of the turquoise, grey & green scribble (Bungle Jungle) prints and broke up the solid teal green.
The binding I was using was another piece from the lovely gift of a huge bag of scraps I received a few years ago. Not quite big enough to make it all the way around I added in some of the yellow polka dot scraps I had left. This I decided would tie in with the yellow scrap I used on the back of the quit.
Here are the quilt back pieces before they were all joined together:

The quilt sandwich was compiled & then I began to play around with how I might quilt. I liked the notion of random lines, reflecting the 'crazy' lines in the 9-patch squares.

Two things I couldn't find the answer to on the internet.
1. How do you plan the pinning around such a  random quilting plan without having to remove & re pin pins the whole time you quilt?
2. Where do you start so you minimise bunching/puckering? I know it should be working from the middle outwards & I could do a few main lines that fitted that, but then what!?

This was in part my own answer - I lay wool 'lines' out over the quilt in a rough pattern I was happy with & tried to pin around these lines.

And then used painters tape to mark the line before quilting.

It kind of worked - but there was still a whole lot of pin moving...and a bit of unpicking of puckers where some of the quilted lines intersected. Not too much though.

 Quilt sandwich finished & trimmed down, I then added the binding, making sure to position the yellow section in the one corner to match the yellow on the quilt back. I use metal hair clips now to hold the binding in place - you can buy special (expensive) quilting clips, but the ones I bought from the $2 shop seem to do the trick for me!

Hopefully there is enough quilting to hold it all together for the years of use ahead!