Puzzle Piece Quilting Design

The interlocking design of a jigsaw puzzle can be used as an all-over quilting design. To make a template, lay a white piece of paper over a constructed puzzle and rub a crayon over the paper to transfer the design onto the paper.

The steps that follow serve as a mental exercise in seeing how this design will be quilted. If your quilt top is a grid of squares sewn together, all you will need to do is stitch-in-the-ditch between the seam lines and free-form quilt the interlocking piece shape--hills and valleys. But drawing it out first on paper will definitely help coordinate your hands and head when quilting this design.

The lines between the puzzle pieces will appear white and need to be darkened. Using a black permanent pen, start at the top left corner and trace the horizontal lines across to the right side, travel down to the next row and trace from right to left, repeating the process until you reach the bottom of the design.

Next trace the vertical lines with a red pen.

The manner in which the design is traced is the same path that will be taken for quilting. This is a basic grid that will vary in size depending on the size of the original puzzle pieces. The example here is a 1.5" grid. Begin with the horizontal black lines and continue with the vertical red lines.

To transfer the design to a quilt top, lay the marked design on a light table and trace onto the quilt top with a blue washable marker. When transferring a design to a heavier fabric such as flannel, try tracing the individual puzzle pieces onto the quilt top. This works best with jumbo sized puzzle pieces where the grid will be larger. Remember, you can "eyeball" it, but if you like following the blue line, mark it!

Puzzle piece quilting designs would look great on a kid's quilt top. I can't wait to try it out soon!

Copyright©2011, Sharon Baggs

Sarah's skirt

While visiting Sarah in Seattle recently, we made her a yellow stretch cotton skirt.

She wanted to make a waistband to use some 1.5" elastic. We cut the waistband the length of her waist and 4.5" wide. One end of the elastic was stitched onto the waistband, then the other end was overlapped 1/2" and stitched into place.This was folded down to make a 2.25" waistband. You will see stitching on only one side of the waistband, which you will want to have facing toward the body when joining the waistband to the skirt. Finally baste the raw edges together.

For the skirt, we used the full width of the fabric (selvedge to selvedge) and used the waist to knee measurement for the length of the skirt. For example, the full width will range from 45 - 60". The waist-to-knee measurement was 18-20". We trimmed the selvedge edges to make a smooth finished seam, which is sewn 1/2" and pressed open. Baste the top edges of the skirt to gather the fullness.

Taking this tube of skirt, pin the right side of the waistband to the right side of the skirt at the top raw edges. Ease in the fullness as the two pieces are pinned together.

Sew a 3/8" seam all around the top edge of the skirt to join the waistband to the skirt. Follow with a 1/2" or 5/8" seam to reinforce the stitching line. Once this is sewn securely, it is fine to remove the basting stitches.

Copyright©2011, Sharon Baggs

Doll Quilt Binding & Feathered Border

Sewed a double-fold blue binding to the doll quilt, which needed to be flipped to the back and hand sewn in place. I took this with me on the bus a couple of weeks ago when I went to see Oklahoma! at Portland Center Stage http://www.pcs.org/ --a must see!!! The next day I took the bus/max train to Beaverton to meet Martin and finished up this project while en route. Very nice to have some handwork to do instead of averting glances at strangers...

Also this week I'm finishing up another Yellow Brick Road quilt. I've made enough of these to wrap around the block of my house. This one highlights all the free motion designs I have learned or designed myself, so it is truly a canvas of many quilting classes taught. Still have a few open spaces to quilt, but I'm excited to put on the multi-colored binding and put it on the extra bed in the girls' room upstairs. A quilt to greet Sarah when she returns home, if Hannah doesn't steal it for herself!

For the border, I used stencil LD21 Feather Border w/Tendrils 5" (LD stands for designer Linda Mae Diny and the distributor is QCI, Inc.), and also King Tut Old Gold (#976) with a size 80/12 topstitch needle. I lowered the top tension to 1 and had to drop it even lower when the bobbin got near empty. I put King Tut Betty Cotton Cottage Colors (#949) in the bobbin which blended well with the backing fabric. I used a hand-dyed backing fabric which had some darker streaks running through the base burgundy.

In other news...Becca ran her personal best of 22:50 at the Concordia/Adidas XC classic last weekend, finishing 6th in the unscored JV race, out of 157 runners. Way to go Bec!

Sarah was home from Seattle to cheer her on as well as the usual suspects, including my brother, John, who said Becca ran her best race EVER!!! This is senior year, she's a captain and it looks promising for her to run at the varsity level for next week's district meet. Barring a natural disaster, the team will go to the state meet. Last year, Becca got to run as an alternate when someone got sick. This year she's ON FIRE to train hard for all the season ending glory she can enjoy. And she should :)

Sarah snapped this lovely photo of my dad's habanero peppers which we left to ripen on the windowsill. It didn't take long for all the green ones to turn from yellow to orange, then we popped them in the freezer.

Oh, and the domestic quilter celebrated another year of wonderful life with family, friends, and quilts! Blessed am I.

Copyright©2011, Sharon Baggs

Tomatoes & Quilt Discovery!

Spent yesterday canning 13 pints of tomatoes (+12 last week), something I haven't done for several years. It goes hand-in-hand with the domesticity of quilting to be a canning woman. At least once a decade. When winter sets in and I'm a quiltin' away, I'll really be thankful for those jars and the yummy meals they will provide.

Most of the tomatoes came from my dad's garden. He had 12 Early Girl variety tomato plants this year. I had two growing in my yard and the fruit was never as red and juicy as those grown on my childhood homestead. I still have some Siletz, Northern Delight, Roma, and Sunspot packed into one raised bed.

Was cleaning back behind the loveseat and found this little quilt I was working on during spring break. I did blog about how I was hand quilting it and then I obviously forgot all about it. Leather is slippery! Out of sight, out of mind. I think all it needs is another line or two of quilting, then on with the binding.

Copyright©2011, Sharon Baggs