Sunday, October 17, 2010

Cherish Nature - Part 2

Well I finally started on the Cherish Nature quilt, but I have to tell you this quilt is going to be a challenge.  First the panel wasn't printed on grain.  I had this problem when I did the baby quilt back at the beginning of the year.  I'm beginning to wonder if this is a problem with most panels.  The large bird's nest picture is approx. 15 inches square but it is almost 1 inch out from top to bottom and even the small bird and bumblebee squares are out.  So what I decided to try is blocked these pieces to see if that will fix the problem otherwise I'm going to have some serious issues.  The small squares aren't as bad of a problem since they are only being appliquéd onto the quilt, but the large bird nest piece is the centre of the quilt and if it's out then the whole quilt is out.


Then I had to make half rectangle triangles instead of half square triangles.  Well I found out that you simply cannot cut 2 rectangles and put them right sides together sew down the middle, cut and expect to have 2 half rectangle triangles like you can with half square triangles.  In the picture below the top block is what you get from doing it that way.  As you can see the final shape isn't a rectangle.  It comes out this weird dimension and I'm not sure why it does this, but it does.  So it definitely needs to be paper pieced, and the example below it is the paper pieced method.  So I have to make 7 more paper pieced half rectangle triangles.


Finally the egg fabric also wasn't printed quite on grain but at least it was only slightly off and since my egg borders are only 2 1/4" wide I don't think that if they are slightly off grain that it will affect the outcome of the quilt that much.

Given all the issues that I came across today I think I now know why it has taken me several weeks to get into the mood to do this quilt.  I must have suspected that there were going to be issues with it and I didn't want to deal with then.  Hey at least I got these ones figured out and I hope the blocking of the centre piece will fix it and I will have a square centre.

5 comments:

Sand and Sunshine said...

Look at me I'm the first comment! hehehe I love that butterfly fabric on those half rectangles, and boy oh boy what a difference paper piecing made on that. Goodness but those panels are skewed, best of luck, it's no wonder you didn't want to sew.

Unknown said...

I also like the butterfly fabric.
Good luck wiht the skewed panels. I have encountered that before.
Gina

LongIslandSue said...

I love the fabric; it's truly beautiful. There is NO excuse for fabric to not be on grain. I've run into this as well. I'm wondering if it's worth complaining to the manufacturer. Seems like a common problem -- maybe we quilters should start being a bit more vocal about it.

hetty said...

Hi Vicki! I thought I had left a comment on this already, but I don't see it. I think blogger was giving me a hard time last week. I love the fabric. Hope you can get it squared off. I think it will look fantastic!

Donna said...

Sorry to hear about the grain problem.... If all else fails try appliquing the panel onto a solid centre cut on grain, allowing it be slightly "framed" by this center peice -- I know, more work, not the origianl look you were going for, but will allow you to have a quilt "on grain" while still having the centre panel what you want and "off grain"...