Passion flower is a big, bold design that comes together so quickly you could stitch it in a weekend will work our way around the center star.

With classic techniques gone, jumbo sized.

We'll deal with big themes, creating large templates and tips for squaring it all up.

Let's quilt big and fast on today's episode of Love of Quilting.

Funding for Love of Quilting is provided by.

The Bernina 990.

If it can be imagined, it can be created.

APQS longarm quilting machines allow you to express your creativity.

APQS quilt forever.

The Warm Company manufacturer of battings and fusibles for quilts, crafts and wearable arts.

Panasonic, maker of the 360 degree freestyle cordless iron, magic quilting and crafting collection, ironing sprays, and more.

Hi there and welcome to the 4700 series of Love of Quilting.

I'm Sara Gallegos, and I'm Angela Huffman.

Angela, you have a really stunning big black quilt here.

It is bold, right?

And you know what's great about big blocks?

They go together so quickly.

I feel like this could be a weekend project.

Yeah.

And you will need a little bit of room, because you're going to see as the quilt gets to be built, it takes up a lot of space.

So this is the quilt where you take over the kitchen table.

Yeah for sure.

And probably the dining room and the living room as well.

But it goes together really fast.

So the first thing that we're going to do is we are going to make a giant a giant goose.

So, you could, do this number ways.

I just did it with a big rectangle and a flippy corner.

Okay.

So I've got one done here, and I've got this one marked on the diagonal and I have it marked.

So you're going to sew corner to corner.

But a lot of times when you do that you cut away this excess.

And it kind of hurts my heart a little bit because that's a lot of waste, a lot of waste.

So if you actually want to sew that seam corner to corner, if you sew an additional seam a half inch away from that seam, you will get and I did it on the side.

You will get a second half square triangle.

Nice.

And you could use that for the label.

You could use that for a different quilt.

But it's a nice way to get an extra half square triangle.

So if you would just so that, corner to corner.

Yeah.

I really like this was, Deborah Rivera that she came up with, passion flower, and she used, a really, beautiful, kind of softer palette.

And I went a little more loud and bold with it.

But these are massive blocks are going to go together pretty, pretty quickly.

And I love the idea of putting together a little secondary block that could be, you know, a matching pillow or a table runner or something.

Or you could just have.

I don't know about you, but I have a box where it just has all of my half square triangles that don't have a home.

Okay.

And so at some point, I could take all of those and make a really interesting, scrappy quilt kind of made out of all of the other quilts that remind me of, you know, a quilt I've made in the past.

And that's a neat memory project to work on.

Just to have the memories of the clothes that you made and maybe who you gave them to or what inspired it.

Yeah, okay, so we've done that and we're going to cut right between those two, those two lines of stitching.

And that is going to give us our little daughter half square triangle that we didn't have to work very hard to get.

And then you're not wasting that fabric.

Very nice.

So we don't have a plan for that.

But you could use it and you could mark both lines.

Or the foot that I'm using is pretty wide on the left side of it.

So I went down the center and then I just moved my fabric over and just kind of eyeballed just outside of the edge of the foot, because I had tested it to see where the half inch landed.

And there are some feet.

It's a quarter inch on both the left and the right, and some feet it's a little wider on that one side, so get to know the foot you're using and how you can kind of use it to your advantage.

Okay, there's our massive goose.

So now we're going to put a big old block on this side.

All right.

And that's just a quarter inch seam on that side.

And then you're going to do the same thing, a quarter inch seam with a big old block on this side.

And while you're doing that I'm just going to walk through this, this next piece.

So this is a really long rectangle, a giant rectangle.

And again, is just a, a square that I've sewn on the diagonal.

And then flip that out.

So it is going to go together so darn fast.

Yeah.

And I did make, daughter blocks out of these two, so I did the same thing because it just I don't want to throw in all that fabric away.

So you're lining up that goose.

I'll be anxious to see your project when you make.

Yeah.

Your daughter block project or your scrappy half square triangle project.

Yeah.

There we go.

Especially half square triangles, because there's so many ways to lay those out.

Right.

So you could come up with some really interesting, designs that way.

So now I have a choice about how I'm going to process.

And because I used a solid color and then I have that dark green and my goose, I am going to make the choice to press this towards the goose.

Even though I've got that seam coming into the corner, it's just going to help.

If I had any shadowing, it's just going to help kind of mask that.

And when you kind of when you have a determination of which way you want.

So I want it to go towards the goose.

So I'm going to put the goose on the top side so that when I do bend it back on my ironing surface, I kind of force that seem to go in the direction that I want it to go in, especially when you've got that pieced tangle in there.

That helps a lot.

Yeah, so there's that guy and that is the way it would go together.

Okay.

So there's a lot of really, really long seams in here.

I've got this already made.

So I'm going to set this aside because we've got that already made.

But, I have the star center to this block, completed.

And I just want to see it's a very simple it's a very simple block in the middle.

Okay.

So there's the block in the middle, right.

So really the only patchwork is this block right here.

So you've got four of the that same unit.

Yeah in this one star.

So I'm just going to show you quickly how that is made.

Because this is that's the unit right.

So we're going to take two triangles put those together.

And then one triangle here.

And that is going to get us that unit.

And can you do this backwards I guess I have it laid out there.

But I just so glad you said that.

Two different places can do this backwards.

So thank you for for catching that.

Yeah.

Inevitably I catch it when I have the whole block sewn together.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

So you do want to make sure that you have these, on the same side, right?

Yeah.

So that that's the combo unit that goes inside, that block.

So it's a plain square.

It's the combo unit.

It's a plain square.

And then the middle row combo unit, it's your focal print square combo unit.

Plain square combo unit.

Plain square goes together like any other block would.

Simple.

Okay, so now we're going to make it bigger and bigger and bigger with with some setting triangles.

So I've already done the blue setting triangles all the way around.

And now I'm getting ready to do the pinks.

So vibrant.

Yeah I really love these colors.

So I want to show you how to determine where to put these setting triangles, because it can be a little challenging because they kind of their little wings hang off in the breeze.

And you just want to be sure, like you can see this one like I don't know, do I put it over here and do I line it up with that corner or do I put it over here and line up with that corner?

And it's really important how you put these setting triangles on or it will kind of mess up.

The end size of your quilt top.

Yeah.

Without square edges.

It's really tricky to know where to begin.

Yes it is.

So, the one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to fold this in half, and this is how I did those blue ones as well.

So we're going to do the pink.

But it's the same idea with the blue and the pink.

And then I'm just going to mush it.

And you could hit that with an iron.

But I'm going to finger press the halfway point.

Okay.

Of that center block.

And it's right there.

And then I'm going to deliberately make a choice about how I finger press this, print block because if I were to press it wrong sides together, that's going to give me a little v that will sit down quite nicely inside the little B that I finger pressed on the block itself.

If I were to finger press this right sides together and then go put this down.

Now I've made a tent right, made the top side come up and the bottom side go down, and they aren't going to sit well in between each other.

So one is pressed right sides together, the other is pressed wrong sides together.

And that way they will sit together nicely.

And the way that I always think about it is I just lay it up here as if you know, it's going to be ready to sew.

And I just kind of think about how do I want that v fold to go?

And then that's the direction that I would press it.

Yeah.

And I would definitely say a pin here, especially when you've got together a big old unit like this.

Right.

Because it's going to start to slip and slide on you.

And even when you walk it over to your machine, just kind of go, go easy on it.

Things can slide.

I've got this one.

Do you have one more pin?

I do, and so this can be a big seam.

And one of the challenges with big seams is to just make sure that that bottom fabric doesn't wander away right as you.

So you're seeing won't be consistent.

So you're going to rotate that around.

Yeah, I know sometimes the path to the sewing machine can be dangerous.

Things can shift every once in a while.

My blocks flip over.

Yeah.

You know, suddenly I have something backwards and it's just.

Or you put that combo block with the weight on the wrong side.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I would say too, so, you know, we're using prints here.

If you were brand new to quilting, you might consider using some batiks only because a petite fabric doesn't have a top or bottom, right side or a wrong side.

And so if you do happen to, you know, finger press it in the wrong direction, it won't matter, right?

It's the same top and no big deal.

Print fabrics, very different print fabrics.

The back side are going to look very different than the front side.

Yeah.

And I kind of just pulled all the excess weight of the quilts up to the table.

Just a little tip because as I was sewing, I was feeling like it was catching and it wasn't staying nice and straight.

And we've got all this bias here.

So we need to keep things flat and smooth.

And I'm just kind of finger scratching all of that together.

And you were talking about taking over the kitchen or the living room, the dining room table.

So if you have, a dining room table that you could set your machine on something, it'll hold the excess back.

Right.

Because gravity will not be your friend at this point.

Definitely.

Especially with these bias triangles.

And if you have a way to sink your machine down into something, even better.

All right.

So we did one massive setting triangle there, and I'm just going to I'm going to go ahead.

There's little dog ears right here.

Do you have some scissors.

And I'm just going to clip those little guys off.

Just to have this lay as flat as I possibly can.

When I press this out, there's a little guy here to.

Okay.

All right.

So I'm going to hit it with my iron first to set that seam.

And then I'm going to use the edge of the iron to help that seam go in the direction that I want it to go.

And so I'm not really ironing, I'm encouraging and I'm pressing.

And there's a difference here, right, between using the edge of the iron, that really hot edge to really just kind of fold that fabric over, then to actually push press, apply pressure and push.

Because again, with the bias, you'll really stretch things out.

If you're ironing instead of pressing.

Right.

Yeah.

You you can distort things pretty easily.

Yes.

Okay.

So here is here is our center pretty pretty right.

To ignore this part, I've already put that piece that we put together because I'm going to show you that here in a minute.

So I think this is glorious.

Sure.

And my brain just starts going, ooh, this is how we quilt to do this is how we pulled it, especially with those negative areas here that, neutral print.

There's lots of great room for you.

So what are you thinking?

Well, I would frame this out and, put a frame in here and do a little free motion inside here.

But I'm thinking something structured inside this, star.

Only because a print kind of takes over.

Right?

So even, like a crosshatch or a wavy crosshatch, and argyle crosshatch.

Have you seen marker?

That would be fun.

Like a diamond crosshatch.

Okay, I'm going to set this aside for now because, the next thing that we're going to talk about is the little arrow, blocks.

And so this is what I'm after.

Okay.

That's the arrow.

Super easy to go together.

We need two of that unit.

So I'm going to give you a blue and a cream okay.

And if you would put that together and love how the arrows in this quilt just kind of point to that center star.

Like look at this, look at this.

You know, in those, those corner, triangles, like, everything is being pulled.

You are just the eyes being sucked right into the center of this quilt.

It's a it's a very dramatic, quilt for sure.

I just love how fast it goes together to.

Okay, so you've got that.

Let me go ahead and press that one.

And then I'm just going to use that edge of the iron to go in the direction I want, and then let it sit there and get hot.

And now we just go here.

And did these need to match?

Oh gosh.

Sara.

Yes, I'm so glad you're here quilting.

But when you get out your seam ripper and you do it again.

That's right.

That's it.

Thank goodness Sara is here.

Yes.

And I even said, you know, have a little little one out here in front so that you don't get turned around having that visual extra block sitting right next to you as you sew is a game changer.

And we think we got it and then we don't.

All right.

So I have one here already made okay.

And we're just going to put a rectangle here underneath.

And just look at the pattern.

These are really easy to cut out too.

Big pieces sometimes can be super simple.

To cut out.

It's another great, way that big blocks kind of bless you.

Sure.

Easy cutting, easy piecing.

Okay.

It's nice to have an instant gratification project.

Sometimes I call it a brain break.

Just something that's not going to require a ton of tedious stitching and that I can get done in just a couple of days just to give myself the feeling of completing something.

Well, that's that.

I work on hard stuff.

I think when you look at this the first time, you might think, oh, it's hard, but Deborah really kind of thought this through and it's really quite simple, the way it goes together.

Yeah, and dynamic and dynamic.

I love Big Punch.

Okay.

So we got those two together okay.

So now we're going to put that one on the end.

We'll do.

And now I chose a plain cream fabric for my neutral print.

And that might make some folks punch up a little bit because of that quilting process.

Because you're thinking, what the heck am I going to put in all that neutral space all around the quilt top?

It excites me.

I get excited about it, but I know some people get a little, bunched up about it.

And so I would just start to, you know, we've talked about all these blocks and how they kind of, draw the eye to the center.

So I would start to think about what kind of quilting designs, and it could be walking foot designs.

It does not need to be free motion.

Right.

You could use your sit down machine and do your walking foot and start to do straight line stitching that really draws the eye in right.

All right.

That one goes with that one.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

We had last season and that really amazing episode with Katherine Redford where she talked about all these really, really cool walking foot quilting techniques and really inspirational, like, who knew you could make such complex designs really simply just by using your walking foot, right?

Yeah.

Don't discount the walking foot.

There's a lot you can do with it.

Right?

I certainly started, with, walking foot, just straight line quilting, but don't think it has to be, you know, strictly just straight lines.

All right, let's do.

And then I've already got this other side done together.

So I'm just going to have you put those.

So a scatter unit there okay.

Yeah.

Oh I thought you were telling me I placed it wrong.

Oh no no I'm looking at going I think I did it right there.

Right.

You got it right.

And, I will say so my friend Melanie, put these, together for me, the step outs, and, she is all about spinning seams any time she possibly can.

So if you are as I do, you like to spend seams.

There's lots of opportunities in here to do that.

And that will help with that.

Quilting process so that you don't have a lot of buildup.

Where the seams all come together.

Everything just lays nice and flat.

There we go.

Okay.

All right.

And then we just have the one piece to go on the top.

So let me press that.

And I'm going to give you that one.

And if you would run that one and then we've got that.

So you'll need four of those.

So you saw you know how quickly that center block goes together.

And then the setting triangles go on again.

Super easy.

It'll take you longer to cut this out than it will.

So it.

But you will need four of these little arrow blocks.

Teams will just seven down.

Perfect.

There we go.

All right, so let's just press that over, and then you've got, some fabric over there.

Behind the machine if you would pull that forward.

Because we're going to be, working on those big triangle corners.

All right.

Next.

So we've got, those arrow blocks all done.

So the bigger planes.

Right?

Yeah.

So, this pattern, you know, sometimes you get it in a book or a magazine, and the pattern takes up multiple pages, and that's exactly, this as well.

So the pattern will have some, lines in it that are giving you some information.

So they're going to have, dashed lines.

That would be the sewing line.

They're going to have solid lines.

That would be the cutting line.

And then they're going to show you where to join the two.

And they're trying to give you as much information as you can so that you can join up these little pieces of paper.

But you can see like right here, I wasn't perfectly perfect.

Okay.

So I want to be with this big, setting triangle.

I really want it to be perfectly perfect.

So what I did is I got some freezer paper right here, and I laid this down.

And then to make sure that I actually had a straight line, I used a ruler.

Right.

And I use a permanent marker on my big piece of freezer paper.

And then that gave me the cutting line.

Now the dashed line here showing me where I'm going to sew it probably isn't information I need.

I know I'm going to sew right a quarter of an inch away from it.

So that's not information that I necessarily need to transfer.

But of course you do want to label it so that you don't get confused.

I want to point out one thing too.

I noticed here, if you have purchased a digital pattern and you're printing it out, it's really important to pay attention to this one inch square.

So you're going to find that on your pages, and you need to measure that and make sure it really is one inch.

Otherwise when you put these pieces together, your pieces will not be the proper size and it's not going to come together.

Right.

So you can always take it to an office store if it's not an inch, and ask them, you know, how do I blow this up to get to the right dimension?

And they would know exactly how to do that so that that might be, the easiest possible way, but, a little transparent tape and some paper and some freezer paper from the kitchen will also get you going somewhere pretty easily, too.

Okay.

So, once you have those.

So the other part about using freezer paper is and I can press that pattern onto my fabric and then cut it again with a long ruler.

And it's just much more and so much more accurate.

Yeah.

So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put that little strip looks like we're making a little hat doesn't it.

We're going to put that little strip right there.

Now I want to be sure again, this is one of those setting triangle things where you can see, like if I'm not completely accurate with where I put the strip, it's not going to, it's not going to give me all the coverage that I need.

So a little finger press there, a little finger press here, and then open that up and line it up.

And then if you would put the little brim on her cap.

Yeah, I'm going to move this over.

So I'm going to just quickly show this and we'll be right back.

Yeah.

So there's where it kind of hangs off the edge of this triangle.

And I'm going to trim that up.

I did you.

So that kind of brim to my hat on.

And then I did press it.

But I am going to trim this up before we kind of marry it to those two other triangles.

Okay.

So there is that.

So he is going to go right next door to him and I'm going to follow that edge here.

So on this one we're starting from the straight edge here.

Yes okay.

And then this one's going to go in here.

So a big a big triangle.

So let's show that and we'll come right back.

So we've got it sewn.

We've got it pressed.

Came out lovely.

And so that is one of our corners.

So the next thing I'm going to do is we've got a big piece of the green already done this one right here.

And we did those little arrows.

So I'm not going to sew this together.

But what you would do is these arrows are going to point towards the center of your quilt.

And let's flip that.

And this one goes on the other side again.

It goes it points towards the interior of your quilt.

Nice.

Okay.

So that big old piece of fabric over there is going to show you how to put that triangle corner, on to the quilt, because there's some interesting trimming that happens here.

I'm going to hand you this one because we've already done that one.

Yep.

Okay.

All right.

So here is how all of that would go together.

So there's our triangle.

There's a top of our star.

There's our little arrow blocks.

And it's going to fit onto our quilt.

And this is another one of those where we are going to want to fold things in half in order to find the center point, in order to put the triangle onto, each of the corners.

But what's going to throw you a little bit on this pattern is the fact that this block sticks out from the square.

So when we set this down, actually let's rotate it because I've got the green on this side.

Okay.

And I tell you what, Sara, just to make this obvious, let's go ahead and sew the super long seam down and then we'll be able to see how we trim it.

For that end finale.

Okay.

Sounds good.

So long seams we got them done.

And there's our triangle.

There's our little arrow block, and then we've gone ahead.

And the triangle is on this side too.

Now we've got this guy sticking out.

Now you've got this guy sticking out.

So what do you do.

So you got you got two choices.

One is go ahead and machine quilt it and get it done.

Okay.

And then you can trim this afterwards.

That's one choice.

Interesting.

A second choice would be to go ahead and trim it now.

And in order to trim it we're just going to go we're going to line up a long ruler on that edge of those setting triangles.

And then we want it to be about an inch above that, those little blue arrows there.

And we would go ahead and slice that off.

Now here's one concern about it though, is that now I've got bias here.

Right.

So a little line of stitching just inside what a seam would be here.

It would keep all that stable for the machine quilting process.

Just a little basting stitch, maybe an eighth of an inch away from the edge right now would do it.

Yep.

Or you could leave it be and cut it off after you're done quilting it.

Well, this is a beauty.

Great job.

Gorgeous, right?

Love it.

Grab a pencil, tips and other useful information.

Coming up next take a look at these here.

This, this came in from Barbara Strauch from Maspeth, New York.

She says, Dear Sara and Angela, love your show.

You've inspired me to make a quilt of valor.

Now that I've retired as a relatively new quilter, I couldn't decide if I wanted to make a half square triangle or an Irish chain pattern, and I was terrified of cutting up the fabric, then realizing that I didn't like it.

So I took all the fat quarter pieces to my local office supply store color, photocopied them, cut up the paper into squares and triangles, and then I tossed the pieces around on a table like a jigsaw puzzle until I was satisfied.

I hope this tip helps anyone else who is hesitant to cut up real fabric.

This is really.

I could do this all day.

No, I'll do a little digging here.

Now.

Okay, back to business.

Okay.

You're gonna love this one.

This is kind of a little show and tell from Catherine Kroll of Ventura, California.

Ties?

Yes.

She says, I just watched Angela show on the tie table.

Runner.

And it prompted her to share.

After her husband passed away, she donated his ties that were still usable and the rest became memory projects.

She made a large round table topper, maintaining the wedge shaped.

She quilted each wedge shaped differently, and also created a table runner for a chest and a fan style quilt block.

She says, I love your show and always carry away an idea or inspiration.

Oh, it's so nice.

I was so surprised at how much, you know, emotional connection I have to those ties.

So nice.

Thank you so much for sending in your tips.

We always love a prop two.

You can send it to the address on your screen.

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Funding for Love of Quilting is provided by.

The Bernina 990.

If it can be imagined, it can be created.

APQS longarm quilting machines allow you to express your creativity.

APQS quilt forever.

The Warm Company manufacturer of battings and fusibles for quilts, crafts and wearable arts.

Panasonic, maker of the 360 degree freestyle, cordless iron, magic quilting and crafting collection, ironing sprays, and more.