Braids the Lazy Quilter Way

Transcription

1 Braids the Lazy Quilter Way It s time for me start working on the braids for the borders of my Bricks in the Barnyard quilt. The looks a lot more complicated than they actually are. A while back I sewed together Bonnie Hunter s Texas Braids

2 quilt.see here That was a lot of braids. Kelli started one Kayla started one. Both of them quit as they got sick of jumping up and ironing all the time. Phht. Iron, what s that? I know some of you might faint dead away when you hear this but I didn t iron a single seam of mine until the entire braid was finished. I m the leader of a bandwagon who believes ironing and pressing quilts is WAY over rated. But as with everything people need to find their own way and do what is comfortable for them. Me, I hardly iron until a block is finished.or in this case, a braid. I thought I d give you a peek at how me, the non-ironer, makes a braid. I have two braids going at a time in my photos. I feed two through then clip off the back braid and work on it.

3 I got started. square attached. in place? Now I am adding the rectangle without a red See how the black printed piece needs to go

4 When sewing that piece on it s easiest if I place the black piece on the braid right sides together but then flip the entire braid upside down. I am going to cross the seam where the red square was added. pointed to the red square. There I make sure the seam is

5 Once it s sewn I flip it over and check all is right. finger press it back. I

6 Next I need to add the rectangle with the red square attached.

7 Now I put the piece on top.i sandwich the seams, no pins needed.

8 I sew the seam, going slow at first to make sure the seam stays in place.

9 The top piece I am adding is shorted than the braid so after I ve passed the length of the newly added piece I swerve off.

10 In 15 minutes I had two braids this long. the machine. Easy peasy. I never got up from

11 It did take a bit to get my system down but after that I did it was actually really quick but that s the no iron-no pinning method. The regular way, if stopping to iron after each piece was added, that, would take MUCH longer. My way isn t the right way for everyone but it definitely is the right way for me. done in no time. If I keep it up, these braids will get String Challenge and More Before you start reading today s post, we have an auction happening on some quilt items. Check it out on here. The

12 auction ends at noon today central time. Now to today s post: I didn t get any quilting done this week. It s been crazy busy and I can t keep up. I ve spent a couple evenings marking stuff to take up to the antique mall booth. Hubby is in the field and hasn t been getting home until 9:15pm or so. I have to put supper on for him and manage the things he usually does. It s not a big deal but does cut into my time. I ve had Carver late a night and went to Cedar Rapids to watch my grandkids. I ve loved it all and don t regret a bit of it. I also ended up at an auction.you ll want to see what I bought. Check in tomorrow morning for that post. I did touch a sewing machine.i had to do this make a backing and iron it. Ruby can t resist being in a picture if at all possible. The quilt top that it s for is this..

13 Sorry just a sneak peak. This one is heading over to Carla s of Longarm Quilting Inspirations. We re hoping Carla can work her magic and bring this quilt to life.

14 One of the reasons I put a rush job on this backing is that Carla is coming to our house today. We re getting a picture taken with me, Carla and Kelli with the quilt On the Bright Side that was the cover quilt for American Patchwork and Quilting. The quilt is being honored as it was selected to be in the anniversary quilt show for American Patchwork and Quilting. Oh my. What an honor for the three the three of us that our quilt was selected the best of!!! So how d I do on my String Quilt Challenge. touch it. Life is too full right now. Terrible. Didn t I did see that Bonnie s new book will be coming out in December of this year.

15 My challenge was to finish all of the quilts in String Fling before it came out. Seeing the new cover is some motivation for me!! I need to get sewing. Quilt Finish: Scrap Crystals Remember that never ending string of half square triangles?

16 Well it FINALLY turned it this! The quilt is Scrap Crystals. It s a Bonnie Hunter quilt and can be found in her book More Adventures with Leaders and Enders.

17 I m super happy to have this one finished. I had lost my mojo and it really stalled out. To be honest I likely wouldn t have finished it but I ve

18 learned a little trick.load the quilt into the frame even if I m not really in the mood to quilt it. Then, at least that part is done and the other thing, I HAVE to quilt it before I can get something more pressing on the frame. In this case, I had to get Lucy s baby quilt done so I HAD to finish quilting this as it was on the frame. To make my life easier I had enough fabric to bind the quilt with the same fabric that I used for the border so I just used it. This is half of the quilt.

19 The original quilt was in a 4 x 5 layout. 5 x 5 setting. Check out my lovely brown grass. I increased it to a

20 I had a few extra blocks so I added them to the backing. is also a batik. It

21 I attribute two factors in this quilt coming about 1- My friend Connie said she was thinking about making Scrap Crystals all in batiks. I loved the idea but had no batiks. 2-A blog reader gave a lot of green batik scraps. They are all in this quilt. They were the perfect size I needed. Without these two factors, I d likely not have made this.

22 The lighting wasn t the best the day I took pictures. more of the true colors.all batiks. This is

23 I did some simple loopy loops for a quilting motif. light variegated thread. I used a When I showed the quilt to Hubby he said, Wow, that is a lot of little pieces. I think that s better than his typical cool.right? Betsy, Kalissa s dog, was at our house when I was taking pictures. I didn t take Ruby out with me and oh, she was MAD! See her in the window?? I was getting the stink eye.

24 So I let her out so she could do her modeling what a dog! So check that one off the list It is finished! I m so happy.

25 String Challenge and More On the String Challenge front. For those of you who have been following along with me, you know that I ve challenged myself to finish all of the quilts in Bonnie Hunter s new book String Fling before her new string book comes out. As of now I have three quilts left to make. Pineapple Crazy Tulip Bed Daylilies I told you that I was sick last week again. Before I ended up on the couch for some rest I managed to get all, as in EVERY LAST ONE, of my Pineapple Crazy blocks sewn!! I was so happy.

26 I stopped and snapped a picture of the last block on the last stitch. If you ve made this quilt you would understand why them moment needed to be memorialized. After that, it was time to trim and de-paper. I love my little square ruler for squaring up. I use it a lot!

27 Over the next two days, Hubby and I went to a garage sale. I grabbed the blocks and de-papered in the car. He drove me to the doctor and I de-papered then too. Once home from the doctor I was banished to the couch but decided that my Pineapple Crazy blocks were going with me. I de-papered and watched an episode on Netflix. That s all the time I needed to finish my de-papering and there it was. My 60 border blocks finished!!

28 I am so excited!! I m hoping next week I ll have them all sewn together and attached to the center. I m pretty much possitive that will be happening. I am too close to a top to not keep pushing through to the end. Before I go, last week I commented that I use tracing paper for my paper pieced blocks. For me, it s essential. I tried paper piecing on regular paper and it was terrible. Tracing paper made all the difference for me. I can hold the paper up to the light and see where the seam is going to land once I sew it. Tracing paper is a must as far as I am concerned. I had people ask questions about it. I got mine at Dollar General. I got it a year or so ago. At the time I bought up all they had. I m not positive it s still available. It is available other places for example here is some from

29 Amazon. Another question I got was if it was hard to get to go through the printer. First off the pages have to cut down to regular paper size. The tracing paper is 9 x 12 and regular printing paper is smaller. It doesn t feel through the printer as easily as regular paper but if you attend the printer, it s possible. I recommend only putting five or so pieces of paper into the printer at a time. Occasionally the printer will grab two sheets as the paper is so thin. It s do-able with my cheap HP printer. Stop back next week I m hoping for a finished quilt top!!