Monday, March 16, 2015

Four Patch Diamonds


Here's another Monday preview! I need 28 of these 4" blocks, and I have 17 done. One more day should do it.

There are probably many ways to make this block, but to avoid higher mathematics I've been foundation paper piecing them. I started with some raggedy oversized four patch blocks, and home made paper foundations printed on translucent vellum:


Then I just lined up the seams with the centre cross, pinned it, trimmed it, and sewed through the paper to add the dark green corners.

It worked reasonably well, but I did find that the block tended to shift a bit when I sewed. You can see that with the blue one above. I loosened up the presser foot, which helped a lot. With the last batch I will also put an extra pin right in the cross seam and see if that helps too. In any case, they will do.

I've really enjoyed getting back into the rhythm of paper piecing. I find it very relaxing to not always be worrying about a perfect 1/4" seam, and my high speed machine makes quick work of the short stitches. I even like tearing off the paper! The crisp vellum comes off easily and doesn't leave any little bits in the seam. Hopefully nothing will come up tomorrow and I can get the rest done. Fingers crossed!

6 comments:

  1. It sounds like a simple and useful technique. I can see that slippage would be a risk. Still, the joy of making such progress would easily outweigh the risk - and the result is good. Hope the remainder go smoothly.

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    1. Thanks, Jillian! It has been fun, and I hope the last batch will be even better!

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  2. Four patches, always a favorite. I will be interested to see what you do with them. I have been tempted to jump on board a recent four-patch project from American Patchwork & Quilting that Bonnie Hunter talked about a month or so back. Then again, Kevin the Quilter and I are thinking of hosting a half square triangle exchange along the lines of the one several years back with Edyta Sitar on thequiltshow.com. On a MUCH smaller scale, of course (they received literally hundreds of thousands of entries).

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  3. I'm not sure what you mean by the blue block shifted, because it looks pretty good to me. I had never thought of paper piecing 4 patch diamonds, but why not? It makes good sense. I also like your idea of using vellum. Do you buy it on a roll or does the vellum you use come precut? Is it a lighter weight vellum? Either way, it's a great idea, one I'll try out the next time I use paper piecing.

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    1. Thank you! Well, I didn't put the worst ones in the photo, but the blue is not perfectly square. The vellum is standard letter size, and apparently now legal as well, Simple Foundations by C&T Publishing. I get it here -- http://www.connectingthreads.com/tools/Translucent_Vellum_Paper__DTranslucentVellum.html

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I'm told Blogger has been bouncing some comments, so if it happens to you I'm sorry! But the settings look right so I can't explain it. In any case, thanks for reading!

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