Blue and White Twister Cat Quilt Finished

I made this using the large Twister template. I made it for my friends cat! Hey, I needed a quick win.
The first stage is to sew the various squares together. I went for simple light/dark alternating pattern. Then you line up the template and cut. Then they are realigned and sewn together in rows. It really is a very quick technique and easy for learners. Very forgiving.

 Because this was a cat quilt, I wanted to use some of my batting scraps rather than use "new" stuff. I have some quite wide offcuts from bigger projects, so I only needed to sew two pieces together. So I squared up the batting to get straight sides. Then just ran them through the machine using a zigzag. It sits very flat.

Once it's sewn I spray based it. Very quick way to do it.

Then once it was done I did a very simple straight line quilting using my walking foot, 1/4 inch on each side of the main seam and then across the squares created by that quilting.

And here is the finished product! It measures about 25" square (only a guesstimate, I forgot to measure!!)

And here it is ready to be given to the slave of said cat!

Read More

Pink and Green Twister Baby Quilt Finished

And another one done!! This one is for my about to be grand neice. I love the Twister templates for quilts like this. Just very basic but sturdy quilting for something which will get a lot of wear (hopefully!).

If you'd like to see how the Twister template was used with this quilt, check out my previous Pink and Green Twister post.

Below is Hattie helping me with the binding. Which reminds me, this was my first attempt at mitred corners. Why have I not been doing this the whole time??? So much easier. And I found a great tutorial for doing the final join when putting the binding on - Bumpless Binding Finishing Trick:

Read More

Pink and Green Twister

I'm not one for specialist templates, but they had a big quilting day at Spotlight a little while back and demonstrated the Sew Easy Pinwheel Magic Template. It was funny, cause just that morning I'd been thinking I'd like to try this technique!!

So I bought the larger one (small is ok but extra sewing!) and decided to give it a try.

Basically, you cut and sew a bunch of squares together. I used pink and green with white background. The size of square required it explained on the template packaging. And then you had a border. You end up with the layout below (pink and green squares with a white border).

Then you align the template on the corners where four blocks meet and cut out. This template gives three styles of pinwheel. I used the most extreme angle which gives the more traditional pinwheel look. I'd recommend using a small sized rotary cutter. I usually use a 45mm but that was a bit big.

As you can see from above you get a bit of waste. The big square in the middle (the green) is plenty big enough to chuck in the scrap bag and use again later. The little bits between blocks is really not that much and not really worth worrying about.

Once the blocks are cut out, you twist them around and end up with your pinwheel block as below.

Then you just put all the blocks together to get your quilt top.

Then I added a pink border. This one is now ready to quilt. A couple of things to keep in mind. When you use this technique, all the edges are on the bias. To be honest, this wasn't really a problem when I was sewing them all up. Also, cause the corners are already done before you cut them out with the template, this is a great technique for those who have a problem getting seams to match cause if you miss by a little bit you can't really tell.

Overall I was quite happy with it and plan to have a play with it again in the future.

Read More