Today we're sewing a morning sunrise quilt and it's on point setting will surprise you.

We'll play with color gradients that go from a rich dark to a glowing light hue, as well as oversize half square triangles.

Don't let the sun set on this morning sunrise quilt.

Join us a “Love of Quilting” and be inspired by color.

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[Upbeat music] Welcome to the 48th season of Love of Quilting.

I'm Angela Huffman.

- And I'm Sara Gallegos.

Sara, you have brought a yummy is like, the only word I can use to describe a yummy palette, as well as a quilt that has lots of places to play.

Yeah, I think that's a perfect description.

So this is “Morning Sunrise” by Sujata Ryan, and the quilt is meant to have like a light to dark kind of shade of colors, but kind of inspired by a sunrise.

Nice.

- And I am so lucky.

In Michigan we have beautiful sunrises.

So I decided to kind of change the color palette just a little bit from Sujata's quilt.

And I'm really, really pleased with what I've got.

Yeah, so I opted to work with fat quarters, and I did find that with fat quarters, I didn't quite have enough to make the full sized quilt.

So if you do want to use like a fat quarter bundle where you buy like the big stack of them, you're going to want to get two and you'll have some leftover.

But, I decided just to like, take two rows out of the quilt, make it a tiny bit smaller.

It still works out fine, and then I could work with what I had.

But what I've got here are just another little assortment of my fat quarters that I thought we would kind of just play with, to talk about how to find those shades, because I think this is something that some quilters, even myself, can struggle a little bit with.

So I have just an amazing person Annette that helps me.

But also I've taken pictures with my phone and sent them to Angela and said, what sticks out?

And what's weird to you?

You know, so it's like you kind of have some choices with your colors.

I've got kind of purpley reds.

This is pinky purple, this goes more orangy red.

So you can kind of pick and choose, what colors you like together.

And it's what do we need one, two, three, four, five.

So you want to help me pick out five that you think would make a nice little sunrise.

Well, I think dark.

You want to a light, a medium, a dark for sure.

Definitely.

- So three of the five.

So I'm going to go dark.

Dark because it has some of the orange flavors in it.

Yep.

- I'm going to go light.

Light.

Like I think that's probably the lightest one.

- Yep.

And something in the middle.

I feel like this one's super pink, whereas that one kind of has some of the rusty reds in it.

Yep.

- So if that's my medium and I need five, then I just need two more to kind of fill in.

Am I doing okay?

- I think you're doing great.

Ok Yeah.

I like this one because it's a little bit lighter, but it has some of the purples to pull out the dark purple here.

I think it pulls that too.

Nice.

And then something in this land, that one's very pink.

But I think it would work.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And then I just kind of like play mix and match too, because I don't know, I can't tell which one looks darker to you.

It's kind of hard to show.

Kind of hard to tell.

Oh wait, wait.

I want to do here.

Oh.

New choice.

Yeah.

New choice.

I like that.

That's perfect.

Right.

So you're just going to kind of play and mix and match.

And then once you have established your five, we do need another piece that's going to become the darkest dark and the lightest light.

And when I did that, I ended up finding that I needed to go kind of elsewhere within the quilt shop.

So it wasn't all coming out of my fat quarter bundle.

And you also need four pieces of yardage that make those big half square triangles the places where you can play.

So I started with those first, and I knew that I needed a purple and a blue and a pink and a yellow, and I just kind of went with things that sort of tied everything together.

Lovely.

I'm working with batiks.

This one looks really, really solid, but it is a batik.

You could also pop a solid in there.

I'm sure.

It's like a tone on tone.

- Yeah.

Where as these have a definitive pattern.

Exactly.

I think they call that like a chop because it's got more than one color in it.

- Yeah.

and they're dyed differently.

So once I had my pieces and my yardage, I was able to find some options for that bright yellow, sun sunshiny color.

And I ended up going with this, which I thought was kind of cool in there.

- Yeah.

And then for the my final dark dark, I actually raided a friend of mine's stash, and I just could not find exactly what I wanted.

I had a solid that was kind of boring in there.

And this is actually an ombré stripe, which is not a batik, but I thought it worked kind of well with with my strip sets.

Oh for sure.

Yeah.

- Oh yeah.

So, you know, don't be afraid to keep looking until you find the right thing.

Doesn't have to all be the same type of fabric.

And maybe you just need to go and raid your friend's fabric closet.

- Always.

Make an exchange.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- So it's all good.

So then after you've selected your colors, then we're going to just be building strip sets.

So this part's actually pretty easy.

And this is where you're only going to get a few of these strips out of a fat quarter size.

So you would need, like I said, two sets of fat quarters.

Or you would need to make your quilt smaller or just use yardage.

So then we're just kind of ready to lay them out, and we want to sew them together from light to dark.

So these are the ones that I had used in my quilt.

So just to keep myself from getting confused, I just sort of laid them out side by side.

And I worked in sets of twos.

So if we want to, we could just do a little quarter inch seam down here and begin our set.

Yeah.

And for those who don't know, tell them what a fat quarter is.

If they've never heard of that word before.

A fat quarter is a precut of fabric that is, 18 by 22in.

So why is it called a fat quarter?

It is a quarter of a yard.

So if you think of a yard of fabric being 36in, a quarter of that is nine inches by like the width of the fabric.

So the 42, if you were to, you know, open up a whole entire piece.

I'll show you what I mean.

So your fabric is folded over always.

So you really have about 42in here.

So a quarter would be nine inches by that 42.

A fat quarter.

Instead you're going to cut the yardage down to 18in, which is a half of a yard.

And then you've got that fold and you cut the fold off at the top.

So if you could imagine this would be my 18in of fabric by 42.

Cut that fold off at the top.

And now I've got 18 by 22.

Is that a pretty good explanation?

- Yep.

Make sense?

Much more usable piece of fabric.

Yeah.

You can't do a whole lot with a nine inch strip.

Right.

So for if you're going to be using a lot of it or need bigger chunks, that 18 by 22 is a really nice, workable size.

And most of the quilt shops have these kind of stashed all over the place, and you can just grab them and play with them, and it's just fun for building extra colors in your stash.

Yeah, or decorations.

- Or decorations or things just to to touch because they're pretty.

Alright.

Yeah.

Right.

Those little fat quarter bundles.

And you can also get curated ones.

Yeah.

But.

- That's what these batiks were.

These batiks all came from the same big stack.

So they're all just a family of batiks that look pretty together.

It could be your favorite fabric designer's newest collection.

You know, you could buy all those precuts.

If you can't decide which ones you like best.

You don't have to make choices.

Just get them all.

And sometimes you have to watch because the fat quarter bundles that you can get, they might not have, some lights in them.

So you may have to pair them or find a coordinating light that will go with them, because they might have just like a bunch of darks and a bunch of mediums.

And it's really best to have a light mediums and darks in a quilt.

- Missing the in between tones.

Missing the in-between tones.

Yeah, I always am on the hunt for light colored batiks.

I feel like it's very hard.

You can find these mediums and darks, but to find the really lights, that's another thing I tend to sort of keep an eye out.

I really like this particular batik, because of the design of it.

Would be a great, batik to use to kind of train yourself to do some free motion quilting just following the, what's printed on the fabric.

- Thats' a fun idea.

You'd want a bigger piece of fabric to do it.

This would be fun to move through the machine.

Yeah, yeah.

- No, that's a really neat idea.

I like that.

- Yeah.

Okay, so with both of those sets that you just sewed, I pressed toward the dark side.

Alright.

- So now we've got four, if you would sew that together.

Okay.

And when you're sewing strip sets, we're doing kind of shorties because, we're not doing a full 42 inch width, but when you do a full 42 inch width strip set, do you alternate, which direction you sew, like, if you sew north to south for the first strip, you sew it south to north for the second strip, I like that, yeah.

I heard a ton of people prefer to do that because sometimes they can kind of bend, but because of the power of my feed dogs and the walking foot that's kind of built in there, I don't typically do that, but I'm real straight.

Take it straight to the iron.

And I do think that having that extra little feed from the top, whether it's the walking foot that you attached to your machine or one that's built into it, I think it helps to keep it from getting that little curvy wander.

What do you think?

Do you like to rotate alternate?

If it's a long piece of fabric, I will, rotate it.

- Yeah.

And then I actually took and drew a line on my pressing mat and use that line on my pressing mat that I drew to to line up the strips.

So the line is straight edge here.

- Right.

And then when I press I'm also kind of helping it to lay there politely and straight.

Keep it nice and straight.

That's a great idea.

Okay, those are so pretty together.

I really like these.

Too bad my quilts already completed.

Now I'm going to need to make something else.

Okay, so there's that.

Now we're going to add our final dark piece on there.

There you go.

- Okay.

And you say that you have pretty sunrises.

In Michigan, inevitably when I see a beautiful sunrise that catches my eye, it's like over a parking lot or something like that.

It's not like it's not, you know, over a hillside or so, or an orchard or something.

I'm always kind of like, oh, that's beautiful.

I'd like to take a picture of that without the trucks in it.

Without the trucks.

We have an orchard real close to my house and just a lot of lakes.

So just a lot of really beautiful scenery.

And just the time of day and the direction I go on my way to and from work each day, I'm kind of driving into the sun, rise and away from the sun into the sunset on my way home.

So I need the shades, but it sure is pretty in the morning.

In the evening.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

And I recently took a cruise and as the sun sets, of course, around the ocean.

Absolutely gorgeous.

Yeah, so much fun.

You can draw so much inspiration from it.

Okay, so we'll press our final dark strip here, and then we get to start cutting our strip sets.

So once you have created your strip sets and pressed them all out, we are going to start sub cutting them into what becomes the sashing throughout the quilt, which is really pretty.

And they need to be five or excuse me, 2.5in.

So first thing I'm gonna do is do that clean up cut.

And what I mean by that is I've got all these raggedy edges on the side.

So I'm going to even that up.

And with the strips that I've got a lot of places to kind of look and make sure that I'm kind of straight.

There we go.

I think one of these in here is a little bit narrow, but it's good for what we're showing.

So just clean it.

- And you also want it sure that you cut any salvages off because those salvages are going to shrink at a different rate.

That so the selvedge is that edge of the fabric that they use kind of hold on to as they're making the fabric Right.

- That's going to shrink at a different rate.

And then and it might be white and look really weird if it gets sewn into a seam allowance.

- Yeah.

So now we're going to do 2.5in strip sets.

And I like to work in sets of two just to kind of make things more efficient.

So I've rotated my strip.

I've got that nice straight edge here.

I've got a couple more places to really look and make sure that I'm straight, and I'm going to first cut a five inch piece.

So I'm five inches in, and then I'm just going to scoot my ruler over and do two and a half.

So off of that one clean edge I'm getting two cuts.

So that gives me two.

And then I just keep working down my strip doing that.

I actually have some rulers that are even wider than this, that sometimes I can do three at a time and just keep working it back and forth through the strip.

- Yeah.

So kind of.

Right.

- For sure.

Yeah.

So that's it.

Once you've got your strip sets made, you're also going to need to cut some 2.5in squares of your light and your dark, because those are going to be going into the rows of sashing.

So anywhere that we sew lights together, we've got that bright yellow in there.

And anywhere that we're going to do the dark ends of strip sets, we've got that other kind of darker stripy piece.

Okay.

So the second block that's in the quilt is going to be a big half square triangle.

So what I've got right here is my blue and my purple, those extra yardage pieces that I mentioned.

And I've got them right sides together.

And I just drew a line diagonally down from corner to corner.

And if you could stitch on either side of that with a quarter inch seam, that would be great.

And boy, you're not kidneys a big it's not a square triangle.

Yeah.

It's a I can't remember what size square you start with, but it's really big.

And then you've got to cut really big triangles too.

So you'll want to make sure when you cut out this quilt that you've got a large size cutting mat because you're going to really use it up, especially on those diagonals marking.

So sometimes I feel like when we're beginning to quilt, we get a smaller mat like this, - Yeah.

you know, that's 18 by 24in.

And when you start working with big cuts in yardage, you're going to quickly outgrow that mat.

So you'll want one that's a good 36in or longer by, you know, 40, whatever you can find, whatever you can fit on your table.

You know, I did get to that point when I was first starting, and I got one of those, the big mats, and then I went to the sewing retreat.

And I put it in my car.

I've done that.

- And I parked my car, and the heat of the sun.

- Yes.

and and the whole thing - Warped.

- It did this.

And there's just no saving it after that.

- Nope.

You got to buy a new mat.

- Yeah.

So don't leave it in your car on a hot day.

- Don't.

It will melt.

- It will.

Okay, so now I'm just going to cut on that drawn line.

So I've got two big huge half square triangles.

And then I'm going to press those and we'll just press toward the purple.

And again because you're pressing now on that, that bias just treat it nicely.

It's a very big piece of fabric.

Yes.

It's a very very stretchy bias edge.

So we don't want to stretch it out.

Okay.

So then we're going to add our second piece.

And I like to just kind of bump them up to each other.

Kind of helps me to keep things straight.

And as you've kind of mentioned before, I'm pressing both at once.

Extra pressing.

So the orchard near your house, is it apples?

Is it cherries?

- It's apples.

Yeah.

We have other fruits kind of more south of us, but we have a couple of really nice apple orchards nearby that do delicious cider and, those hot, fresh, crispy edge, gooey inside apple cider donuts.

Oh.

So delicious.

- I don't know what.

We're talking about.

Oh, yeah.

They're just like they're they're real crisp and crunchy on the outside.

Usually coated in, like, cinnamon and sugar.

And then the cake donut inside is like, just moist.

And if you get there at the right time, you're going to get it right as it's coming out.

They're hot.

You get a little cider with it.

- Nice.

You sit outside, they've got goats that you can watch.

It's very fun.

Yes.

So it's a nice little Michigan experience.

So I've got my two blue and purple, half square triangles.

And then you're going to do the same thing with the pink in the yellow.

So you're creating two sets of your half square triangles.

Now this quilt is laid out on point.

So while it is rectangular it goes together in diagonal rows.

So I thought it would be kind of fun to actually put most of this quilt together Yeah.

- So that you can see what it looks like working in those diagonal rows.

- Perfect.

So the block that we're going to construct, or the row is going to be two purple and blues and one pink and yellow.

And this is where you're going to really want to pay attention to the photo of the instructions.

It's a little easy to get twisted around in this quilt.

You'll see as we look at some of my pieces here that there are marks for me un sewing - Yes.

because I did a little bit of un sewing.

It happens.

- as I was putting this together.

So what I've got here are two different sizes of purple triangles.

These are the setting triangles, which means that they're going to go kind of between the rows on that diagonal edge to make it square on the edges.

So we've got these really large, triangles that are going to go on the sides.

And then we've got a smaller size that kind of just becomes the caps on the four corners.

So you're going to need four of these and quite a few more of these if ever you sew your piece on and it looks wrong, like you are tempted to want to cut it because it looks the wrong size, there's a much higher probability that you just sewed it on sideways because you think about we could go like this, or we could go like that.

So you're going to want to really look at the picture in the quilts.

Trust yourself.

Trust that you've cut it correctly.

And if it looks wrong, you're going to un sew it.

I also like to put them on a design wall.

Yes.

- Or you could even put them on the floor to kind of lay it out and double check yourself before sewing things together.

That's a good idea.

Just put it on the floor.

Okay.

So what I've got here is going to become one of the bottom corners of the quilt.

So I have added, the sashing on which we're going to do on the next row.

I'll show that to you in just a moment.

But I want to talk about the first set of triangles that go on.

So this is going to be, like I said, a bottom corner, and we're going to be moving out of the quilt.

So we're going to be using two of our larger triangles, and I am going to refer to the picture, because this is one of those areas where I'm going to be tempted to do it backwards.

So we've got our light color here.

And then one of our big triangles, if I can separate them, there we go is going to go like this okay.

So I'm going to have you just go ahead and sew that for me before I twist it around on myself.

Yeah.

- There you go.

Yeah a triangle has three sides.

So you have three choices of how to go together.

So you need to know which which of the choices is the right choice.

You have a 30% chance of getting it right, 33%.

- Right.

That's scary.

That's what a seam ripper is for.

I know you can really tell with this that I have been doing some ripping.

It is a really beautiful quilt on point.

It's a beautiful look.

- I really like it.

Yeah, I really like the design.

Very pretty.

So while I've got this here in the right direction, we're just going to go ahead and do that and then I will press them at the same time.

How about that?

- Okay.

- Here you go.

I like to sew from the square edge first instead of from the pointy triangle tip, - For sure.

which is why I rotated it when I handed it to Angela.

You like that too?

- For sure.

Yeah.

It also puts all of our strip sets kind of traveling down, so we're not flipping over any seam allowances.

And I did really go, like, I don't know, a half inch or something and stop with the needle in the down position.

And then I kind of scratch the edge of the fabric until I can see the bottom fabric kind of peeping through.

You could absolutely pin.

And then I just put my fingers down and kind of hold everything.

And once I approach my second hand and I scratch again and kind of expose that, underneath layer and put my fingers down as basically pins, that's kind of holding everything together and then have that fabric approach that hand before I move the hand again.

That's right.

And the points of the triangles do stick out farther than the edge of the fabric.

Don't be alarmed by that.

That's geometry.

- It's geometry at work.

Yes, exactly.

Don't feel like you should cut them off.

Okay, so now I'm just gonna go ahead and press those, and I basically on all of these pressed out toward the triangle.

But we just want to keep in mind here that we've got a whole lot of bias going on.

So we want to be real careful about our pressing.

I noticed in another, quilt that you did the season you had at the end, after you had the whole quilt top done, you put a small line of stitching all around the outside, - Yes.

- a line of stay stitching just inside where the binding would go.

And especially if you've got bias on that outside edge or you've got any piecing on that outside edge, running that line of stitching all around the outside of your quilt will just stabilize everything, especially if you're taking it to someone who's going to quilt it for you.

- Right.

But that will really help them a great deal.

That's a great point.

Otherwise, sometimes your, seams can kind of come apart, especially on the edges.

I love that, yeah, it was just a little eighth inch baste.

And it's also, as you mentioned, really important with things like this because we have all these little seams coming together.

And I did find that sometimes just by manipulating it to un sew places, I was tearing things apart.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Okay.

So thats the bottom.

And when we were to actually put it together.

- It needs a little.

A thingy here.

You get one of these little caps at the bottom.

- There you go.

and that becomes a corner of the quilt.

Okay.

- Yeah.

So let's go ahead and lay out the next row.

And we're going to set this aside.

- Okay.

So we might be able to get to that.

So our next row is going to have two of our blue and purple blocks and one of our pinks and yellows.

And as we're moving up in this direction of the quilt, the blues face up and our yellows face up.

Okay.

So you want to keep that consistent.

And then we're going to be inserting our sashing pieces in between.

So this one's going to go dark side up.

And this one is going to go light side up.

So go backwards.

Forwards.

- Just like that.

- Okay.

So what we're going to do now is we're just going to sew these five pieces together.

And then we'll come back and show the next step.

Okay.

So here we've got one row.

And we did add that little hat on to that guy.

So let me just kind of pick some of the stuff up.

And let's look at what it looks like when we start laying it all out.

So get all these extra pieces off.

So a big table even like at your community center pushing tables together, you're going to need some space to lay all this out.

You're definitely going to need space.

Then you can pin the heck out of it and take it home and sew it somewhere where you can lay it all out.

It's going to be helpful.

- For sure.

Okay, so goes like that.

They're always going to touch each other there.

Then we're going to need a couple more of our big triangles.

And when I put this on let's scoot it up here.

So we're going to kind of be offsetting the colors okay.

And we're still going to need triangles on the sides.

And what you're looking for is that you're creating a straight edge as you go.

So if I've got like this where I'm trying to chop that off, - Flips.

- it's facing the wrong direction.

So it should be creating a straight line.

We're also going to be putting our sashings in, and this is where we get to play with those extra little squares.

Those go in here is like a little buffer.

And it's always going to travel darks to light.

- Yellow.

And then we'll put a yellow in.

And then we've got all of our lights coming together there.

And now we're going to travel back the other way from light to dark, add one of our dark squares, and then we're back dark to light.

And adding the triangles out.

And so you would sew all of those together?

- Yes.

And then sew them to either this or this and then start and then put that side triangle.

- Correct.

And I laid it out just like this so that I wouldn't get it in the wrong direction.

One thing I did try to do too was with these stripes was to keep them all horizontal, so I don't really have any going up down.

I guess I do have one there, but yeah, I tried, I tried to keep them all very horizontal.

- Yeah.

So then here I've got the next couple of rows.

So if we just kind of lay these on, you'll see how the rest of the quilt is coming together.

In fact, let's just go right over top of it all and you can see.

- Wow it's so pretty.

Isn't that fun?

- Yeah.

So you've got like a corner there.

So you've got your lights and darks moving through the quilt.

And you mentioned at the top of the show that we do also have some really Great opportunities.

- Places to play.

Yeah.

- What would you do there?

Yeah.

Well, there's lots of places you could even, just carve out, a circle or just outline a square and then fill that with, some kind of background, fill in this side of the triangle and some kind of background fill there.

And you don't have to make them all the same either.

Like, this would be a good place to just play.

That's how it is in the quilt too.

Yeah.

Beautiful, I love it.

Now you get to create your own sunrise.

Grab a pencil, tips and other useful information.

Coming up next.

Well, this one is from, Nancy Williams from Maple Falls, Washington.

She said, when I get a quilt almost done, I make several full size color copies of the blocks, and I practice free motion designs in pencil right on the copies over and over.

It helps develop muscle memory so that when I'm ready, I can quilt it.

That seems like an Angela approved tip.

I like that idea.

- Yeah.

I like that I like it a lot.

I like the lemon fabric too.

- It's very pretty.

This is a this is a gal right after my own heart here.

Diana Jones from Belle Fourche South Dakota says, you two are my quilting BFFs that I have coffee with every Saturday morning while I watch “Love of Quilting,” we've always got coffee within arm's reach, too, so we're having coffee together.

Yeah.

- She says I was so excited learning to embroider on my sewing machine.

I wanted adventure, so I selected my own cache of 30 thread colors to program into my machine.

When I took the cellophane wrapper off the spool, I realized that while the number is on the top of the spool in tiny type, the color name would be lost to me forever.

So I created a simple spreadsheet.

Here we go.

- Nice.

and noted both the color name and the number to coordinate with the spool and the placement in the case, so she can see the thread color and know its name.

And that's helpful in substituting colors in projects and being organized means more time for sewing.

Nice.

Very organized.

Yes, this came from Carol Sherer from Savage, Minnesota.

She says I love your show.

It's on at 8 a.m.

in my area and I make sure to have my first cup of coffee before then.

My tip is something that I adapted from one of Angela's tips.

Oh, nice!

She said.

A while ago you did a segment on the longarm and you turned on the black light to better see the white thread on it.

Most of my quilts are light colored and I quilt with white thread.

So I got a black light from the local hardware store and it's been a real eye saver.

But that's not my tip.

My tip is that it also works to light up the right side of white on white fabrics.

- There you go.

It's been a game changer.

- Nice.

Nice Carol.

- Yeah.

Then you can really see what the print is too.

- Yeah.

If you have a tip to share, send it with a prop 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.

Electric quilt making every quilter a designer since 1991.

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