quiltsRfun

Quilting Lawyer, did you starch your fabric? That has helped me to deal with the bias. Starch pretty heavily.

KalamaQuilts

I agree starch, and be sure you can see the cutting line On the fabric. It may not be your cutting, but the piecing?
When you stitch 3 1.5" strips together do they come out 3.5" wide. On the money? I can't tell you how many 9 patches I've made over the years with 1.5" strips checking the 1/4" mark on my different machines! 4 dozen maybe? Lots!

Using the easy angle and companion ruler we need a minimum of 17" strips, I will have to piece some of my fabric to get full length matches. No problem. I'm starting with fabrics I can get at least 20" strips from. Might be an earth quake and I'll jiggle and have to cut another pair

Now we can coagitate on whether the big triangles will eventually be stitched short sides for a 4 patch or long sides for a pair. Wonder how many will go ahead and stitch those today. Oops! We may eventually cut matching constant units for those if they will be 4 patches, that would be so cute.

tallchick

I agree that starch is really gonna help, I starch the heck out of all of my fabric and it really does help. She does give alternate directions for those not using the specialty rulers, I’m not using the specialty rulers. You can do this!

QuiltingLawyer

I have never used starch before. Is there a special one to use? Do you just spray it on, iron and then cut? I have so many questions now...

Just to clarify... I do the 8 at a time for the HSTs. I'm more concerned about the other ones. I guess I'm going to have to track down some starch and see if that helps things out.

PamelaOry

I just spray on the starch and iron it in. Some people let it set for a few minutes first. You will love how much easier it is to cut starched fabrics. I starch everything now.

i use best press for most things, bought at the quilt store or when I really need a thick starch, Niagara’s from the grocery store.

Krisb

I was sooooo glad to read that she is extending the clues into January. This will keep it manageable for me.

And QuiltingLawyer, spray starch will be a great help, especially on the bias edges. I use Best Press.

It is also easy for the ruler to slip, especially for me on diagonal cuts. All my rulers now have the 3M stick on dots to help prevent slippage. And have that line on the rulers, not off the edge when measuring.

If none of these help, check your seam allowance.

Iceblossom

I put a double thickness of the 1/4" masking/seam tape on my trimming ruler, gives me a tiny amount of lip and does help a lot with the HST slipping. Haven't shown it because it shows a measurement... the dots are also a great help.

I'm about halfway cut for this step (only about 12 sets completed and trimmed so far though) and decided I was unhappy with my limited amount of aquas and have gone back to the rejected fabric stack to add a couple of fabrics. If I'm going to be unhappy, I'm going to be unhappy with more/wider range of tones rather than unhappy with less when now is the time to change/add. My color range for the aqua was much tighter than my other colors and I decided I could go further into other shades, my "blues" are just dark and have green, purple, and blue and despite some of the pictures there is no black!

quiltsRfun

I use Sta Flo starch. It’s a concentrate and you can mix to the strength you like. I usually do about 50/50 starch and water and put it in a spray bottle. I get mine at Walmart but it’s also available at Amazon. The link below will show you what to look for at the store.

https://www.amazon.com/Purex-Sta-Flo...s%2C184&sr=8-1

joe'smom

Carol, the individual units may seem boring, but it will be beautiful when put together (and probably have greater clarity in the pattern than busy-scrappy versions). I did a single fabric per color version last year with tonal neutrals; I did not have as much fun with the units, but it looked pretty put together and the pattern was very clear.

I'm really late getting to the clue today. I thought we'd be pairing dark blues with medium blues, but using aqua with either med. and dark blue will give many more options. I don't have many aquas and med. blues, but have lots of dark blue. Bonnie is so sweet and encouraging in her clues, and it sounds as though she has just as much fun with this as we do!

Sandra-P

Well, in my enthusiasm to get this clue done so I can do some baking I over looked the instructions that say each set is to use the same two fabrics, per page 1. So I had all the one of the clues finished and half of the others before I noticed. It is off to the quilt store tomorrow so I can get more aqua. Just want to try to save anyone else from making the same mistake. Usually Bonnie is so scrappy with her quilts and I just started cutting and thought I was so smart in getting so much done.