Lessons

Lesson Info

Improv String Diamond

So I'm going to go ahead and make a different kind of stripe version or not strike version of this but a string piece block which is just a strings or another way of just saying stripes um and um I'm going to make this one so it's based on on this quilt that I made for my book so these air also improv string blocks I'm going to make a little one and then I want to make a really big one because I've talked a lot about how this can all be made really really big but you know, ready to put my money with my where my mouth is and because I do think it could have a huge impact if they're really big blocks so let's make the little one first and uh and then we'll make a big one as well so here I'm going I have the option of picking cem it's nice to you some prints even in the sample one I have used some prints so if you're dying to use um prints and or in sarah's case you just really want to use some solids instead um whatever it is that you've been doing just the opposite and uh kind of collec...

t some stuff here too you can think about so each block you could make it kind of a half and half you could make it say uh warm and cool, dark and light and um I think I might actually do that just to just to demo that so I'm gonna gather up some some kind of darker or what I am going to deem darker strips and then gather up some lighter strips and let's see if I can kind of make that dark light thing kind of happened, so I have three darkish strips or are strips that unit where the fabric tends to read a little darker and then you get a few were street a little lighter and the reason I can use this little bit is because I'm going to be cutting a diamond out of it so I can use ah short little piece of fabric at the end and I won't have a problem with you know I do want to center it, so I want to center these factors because I'm literally got a free hand cut this diamond shape um so and I'm in because I'm going to do that I'm not going to change them I'm going to do them add them one at a time if you choose to do any kind of change but any kind of contrast of any sort between the two sides of the of block, then that gives you a lot of options in terms of piecing tim them together basically made a haft where triangle of sorts in strips and so you could do zigzags you could d'oh uh you know that kind of pinwheel you can also do a pattern called hole in the barn door you can you've got a lot of options yeah that's a great great name with um um I've also heard I've also seen like zigzags called thunder or lightning lightning bolt yeah, a lot of these blocks a lot of these traditional blocks have more than one name now holly you're quite experienced quota of you worked with stripes on both this steps the diamonds before it's just completely new to you when I did the border of the thai quilt it was kind of like the stripes but it was patterns that was totally against it was all prince prince and stripes but it worked out so again since I really want to make tracking center my fabrics I'm goingto center my trip I'm gonna sew them on one at a time rather than change okay so that's my dark half more pink floyd reference is um and uh this is gonna be my life stripped half ok so I've got the two halves of my um string block so and I'm going to put them together and then I'll show you my I'll show you the free hand cutting them which um I'll show several times because I've never shown it where the geller yeller super with it so it could be run by never showed it where it didn't need to be shown a couple times on and I have to do with the way I explain it. You is a technique to make this one solid large coal topping more bad using strips. Sure. I mean, so you think about it. Fabricas forty four inches. Why forty four, forty five inches wide? Um, you know, so you could just cut it along the with or you could get. Ah, if you wanted so long, wider stripes, you could say, get what is a yard and a half or two yards, which would be seventy two inches, you know, and then seventy two inches by forty five inches. So, you know, you could get quite a few strips, depending on how how, um why'd you cut those strips. So, yeah, sure, absolutely. I would say that if you're going to pee strips that air, that big there's, a specific kind of technique to piecing strips that air that big, what you want to do is, you know, let's say I got two strips and put them together right side together. I want to put a pin on either end first. And I want to fold them together and find the midpoint and then I want to find the midpoint of that in the mid point over here I want to kind of I don't want to just start at one end and starts throwing them together because the fabric is going to stretch and it's not going to end up even though you say you said I don't understand their all you know, seventy two inches by one inch wide as one why did they not fit together that's why you want to kind of um use this kind of graduated pinning method all right, now the funds really gonna begin let me iron this guy okay, so I'm going tio take my mice strips my son together strips I'm going to find the midpoint I'm just gonna I I I like to actually put my finger on I'm just going to find the midpoint of one either the top or the bottom I'm just going to use this one and from that I'm going to cut about forty five degrees in that direction, okay? And then I'm gonna find this midpoint I'm even gonna market and I'm going to cut down this way and say I'm turning it and I didn't make a perfectly straight line here but and then I'm gonna turn it again now I'm going to go straight up from that point from my midpoint on the darker green strip and then when it cut it off here and that's how I'm going to make one court one quadrant of my of my diamonds yes okay, so I'm going to make a couple mohr are gonna make three more but this time instead of putting together his diamonds I'm going put him together a zig zags like we did with the black and white half square triangles cause since I'm using dark and light, I might as well take advantage of that I'm gonna need some more darks and some more lights and then, like the blocks we've made before they're going to be, um issues of health things fit together there are always issues I mean you're choosing your lights and darks michelle is wondering if you there's a rule of thumb on this or again is it just come down to your personal taste on what constitutes light or dark? Well, you know how many how many you will actually used in each block? Um yeah, I mean, I try to keep him even, you know, so I used three darks and three lights, but they're obviously not all the same size. Um but yes, it's it's you know, if you want to make smaller ones, I depends also on what size you want your final block to be, you know, so if I used mohr um um or if I had four five I'd have ah bigger kind of strip sewn stripped section to cut down so there we go okay and now I need darks actually know what I'm going could these guys I'm gonna put this yellow in in place of that blue it's just more fun ok so my my light section gonna go ahead and make the the dark section so this also is is just the perfect um block for um first scrap stuff it doesn't get much better than this because kids guess what if you don't have if it's not long enough you could pieces together you could say hey you know what I only have a little bit of this light won it in a little bit of this light one fine make a strip that way you know so yeah this is perfect for all those little bits that you hold on to and somebody comes appliances do you never throw anything away you know I don't know in the interest of complete honesty no I don't um perfect third trip in my dark section onto the light section of my block so is everyone just using colors are anyone else making a lion darker what is the way it was like to get in the race so yeah yeah you put together here some ball very nice oh very nice I tried to create a border around the room block to make one big block that's good. Wait, how are you doing? Making my own little I'm going pretty texture get this good, sir, how you doing over there when I'm using solids and they light and dark he's ok going well, we had to trade spot, so yeah, yeah, I think enough to pay the room is not picking up on that. All right? I'm almost done with this piecing of my second block here. Swedish all right? Now I could do that again. I can make another diamond this one's gonna be substantially larger than the first one. So again, I'm gonna find kind of the midpoint on go like forty five degrees from that. And yes, there's no way I can know exactly what forty five degrees looks like, but you can kind of id goes back to my first little principle that you have to trust your eyes, turn this down just now, the off culture you're with the markers or any use for those? No, not really. I mean, there's no reason why if you wanted to, you couldn't, you know, kind of peace some of these guys together and see what happens you could use in this filler other yeah, or just something that, you know, I don't know I could be kind of interesting to piece that together um so yeah it so long as you have some kind of plan you know, like I could see piecing them together and then surrounding them with some kind of neutral color you know, just so otherwise it doesn't make it seem like just a mishmash so these two guys could go together but I said I'm going do so let me do this because I'm going tio a zig zag so yeah, I mean I could I would be reluctant tio unless I could somehow make it work with I could do something like that where I um I added them thiss here and that would actually help to kind of continue the she looks pretty well yeah but that's a fine suggestion thank you that is what I'm going to do so here I do have to be aware of where in fact if I folded over that quarter inch I'll have a better sense of where I should pieces like that so I know where where I should piece it's of it'll will emerge from the other strip in the right place. So would that be a good place actually for a beginning to pin pardon me? Would that be a good time for beginning to pin to make sure they get this right it's always going to begin at the beginning? I think if you toe to pin it's a very good place to start is what I've heard I hear you're getting with it never throw anything away. So now when we put these two guys together, they're a little bit more ah, well, size, we could trim this down even to make that work way. Well, I mean, we could add on the other end, too. I mean, it kind of messes up our our our dark light thing bed. I'm comfortable with that, you know, very nice. I think something different, but I was actually asking their malka was enough to play my accent was I was saying to get that where you needed to get the line exactly right, should you pin it? E begin. I said, if you're really beginning, would you rather just tryingto why it, um you could sure, yeah, you could, um but I love the julie andrews reference. Julie is actually my mother. I think I'll british men's, I have a big issue. Julie andrews is my mother. I'm certainly excited multi for the end, of course, and you can look at the gallery because what people have been uploading a really, really great thing, not just on what they've been creating from this course of other things that they've been quilting as well, all right, so because I decided tio follow my adviser, j keough's, uh, urging I'm going to go ahead and make it a diamond rather than this exact cause I no longer really have the dark light thing going on but I really actually like that little that little tip so I'll be doing that again um okay so I'm gonna make two more and we'll put those together when I think about like liberated quote making though I think that you know, this kind of stuff definitely falls into a not that I if I'm if I'm with the one who's defining it and you know where you can just use anything and and put it anywhere that sounds pretty great all right, let me make that one I think that's the nerve wracking bit alison that what you're doing now is actually then cutting it down into the square eyes and if you want you could bring it over here and ok, I lose my little chloe don't lose your little corner yes, I mean this might be an area malka where you actually could potentially make a mistake yes, you could make a mistake that's true e o internal your mistakes into these little kind of edge pieces of interest you're going to need a lot of these you know alison, if we were going to talk about hindu philosophy we would talk about non attachment wait not attack from the final outcome there that works all right one more and I'll have three blocks so how many do you have? How many blocks you've got? Two blocks, right, too great. Anyone else have blocks? They want to show you will in a few minutes. Okay, okay. Ready to cut another one? All right. To have one more. This one fit really well, right there. And I could make one other one, and I'll have my diamond patch and ninety to save these guys because they come in handy. All right, all right. One last one. So I don't think I'm going to get to making time. We've got I'm not going to get to make it really, really day room we'll just have to, you know, practicing visualization all close her eyes and just imagine what one that would be really, really big, but it would it would have a lot of dramatic impact of that. I am sure. All right, just a couple more, I'll be able to cut that last one and have a sense of what I need to do to complete it before I before we finish completely, though I have one other example of something you can do with stripes, so you know, it doesn't by any means mean it's the last example, if there's, anything I've learned over the past couple of days is that, you know, that there's so many, so many possibilities it's really actually very inspiring um but I wanted to show you all just something else that I have done in the past with stripes that you could do easily with blue having strike the fabric of your own d I y stripes deal by straps a great because it creates this incredible texture as well to what you're doing yeah, and I love the fact that there as you call it, embrace your funkiness, you get that sort of regimented look, I'm sure you could probably source fabric that does have a wave slightly wavy lines project I think area heat I mean, as a fabric designer myself, I know that you have to have a repeat because otherwise they can't produce the fabric, so here you don't have to have repeats you can if you want, but you don't have to have them do you ever use a block to measure while you're doing this particular cutting this to make absolutely sure you don't uh, no, but you could I mean, I don't know where it is right now. Oh, here it is. You could easily if you made a big enough um syriza's strips lay a block like this over it, so you know, you could you could have that kind of walking is contained inside a block like that so I tell you what, I'm just gonna place this, and then so you kind of get an idea. I could then add, um, I want these guys I guess like that. So that, uh, yeah, that would work so that I have that continuation. I really love your idea. Um, but don't be surprised if I don't give you any credit for it and, you know, there's a quote, the line's quote that we worked on. And just another example of stuff that you could do with, uh, stripes d I y stripes that's going to be another my new phrase. So d I y stripes that you put together to make diamonds, especially nested diamond. So some of these diamonds are concentric. Some are just, uh, kind of peace, too, you know, kind of make a v shape within the strife, the some have a square of stripes surrounding them to make them fit along with the other, um with the other blocks on bits, even to some degree framed in stripes. So there's a lot you can do with these d I y stripes.