Friday, December 30, 2005

Scrappy Spools with Secondary pattern

Ready to make some spools? :) First you need a pile of 4-patches made from 2" squares. And then you need a pile of 3.5" unfinished Half Square Triangles that are three times the amount of the 4-patches. Example: ten 4-patches and 30 HSTs.

I haven't had a chance to put my WonderCut Ruler to work yet, but I bet it would be much faster than taking two 4" squares, marking one diagonally, sewing a quarter-inch on each side of the line, cutting it in half, trimming it down to 3.5" and ironing them open. Whew... that made me tired just to type it all! ;)

Next I laid out one block to give you an idea of the layout. It will finish at 12" square.


To make it a little more easier to see, I broke the block into quarters. If you look closely, each quarter is exactly the same, only they're turned accordingly to form the spool block. Three HSTs and one 4-patch in each quarter. If you stack them all in one direction, sewing them together goes pretty fast!


I sewed the quarters up, sewed the quarters together to form the block and made a total of 4 blocks. Place the spools tilting all in one direction - in my case, to the left.

And ta-dah! The 4 bocks together form a 5th spool in the center. Obviously the more blocks you sew together, the more secondary spools will pop out. It's so cool! :)

I'm officially all ready for the mystery tomorrow. Half a dozen bobbins wound, new spool loaded, sharp needle and some back ups nearby. Fabric is all cut and in ziplock bags according to the clues. I know where my thread snips are, my rotary mat is clean. Yup! Now I just need to be able to fall asleep tonight. :)

Leah

5 comments:

Trish said...

Leah, the secondary pattern is great! I do need to do this pattern...now just to pick out what color family of scraps to use and cut some squares...

Thanks for the detailed photos.

trish
www.randomthreads.com

Nancy said...

Thanks for the instructions. You just saved the the trouble of working it out for myself. :-) My plans for this weekend (after I finish the Pineapple Blossom top) are to pull all my blue/yellow scraps and to kit this top. It will be my new leaders/enders project.

quiltpixie said...

Thanks so much for the instructions! I've been trying to find an "easy" way of doing spools without an inset seam and that would be "scrappy"

Quilts And Pieces said...

I LOVE these spools and the 5th spool it makes - way cool! I've always wanted to make a spool quilt and never have - wonder why! Maybe this will "inspire" me!

bingo~bonnie said...

Hey there Leah, I saw your post on Stashbusters of your green and purples this weekend 4/15/07- and had a chance to "revisit" your past entries - and read this:

I haven't had a chance to put my WonderCut Ruler to work yet, but I bet it would be much faster than taking two 4" squares, marking one diagonally, sewing a quarter-inch on each side of the line, cutting it in half, trimming it down to 3.5" and ironing them open.

I know you like to give demos with photos and was wondering if you could with this ruler. I have heard of it but never seen it really used and want to know more about it. If you get time, think you could share a demo??? :c) ~Bonnie in SE Texas