FOUR DOWN, OODLES TO GO!

This is the completed top for the Painless Cathedral Windows project I'll be teaching my guild in two weeks.  I hope I can get it quilted before then, but if not, at least they will see what the finished pattern looks like.  Some people learn by watching.  I'm one of those.  Some learn by doing.  I'm also one of those, but I DO better if I have SEEN what I'm supposed to be doing first. 

These three blocks are #'s 2, 3 and 4 in the 20 block series of crazy quilt embroidered blocks that I started wayyyyyyy back in October.  I couldn't make the November class because I went on a cruise with my sisty.  And I couldn't make the December class because DH and I went out to California to celebrate his mom's 80th birthday.

So, I updated my DD sewing/embroidery machine with the newest updates put out by Husqvarna Viking and sat down to try to catch up a few days ago.  My machine coughed, sputtered, and plastered a "motor overload" message on its screen.   I tried cleaning it, contacting the HV yahoo group for advice, and asking Sherry, my local computer and HV and software guru.  Nothing.  So I guessed I should just take it into the shop.  Trouble is, the shop is an hour and a half away.  I don't make those long trips for just one thing.  My next 5D software lesson wasn't going to be until the 17th, and I could take in my cantankerous beastie then, but I was feeling dismal about having to miss yet ANOTHER embroidery lesson!

So I loaded up the machine with hoop and fabric and thought I'd just give it a whirl.  The doltish devil wouldn't even read the USB with the patterns in it.  In a last ditch effort, I put it through the commands to download the updates from the USB stick (I had done it by cable the last time when it refused the stick), and this time the machine took the update like a dream and started stitching out with only an occasional motor overload message.

I'm still going to take it in to be checked, but it's good enough for me to take it to my lesson this week.  Hurray!!

PAINLESS CATHEDRAL WINDOWS 2

In the first installment of this demonstration of a new twist on the cathedral windows block, we prepared our fabrics, cutting and ironing them to specific shapes and sizes.  Then we made leaf units (40) for this particular project.

Now that we have made our leaf units, we need to put four of them together to make a cathedral window block (CW).  Sew one leaf unit to another, raw edge to raw edge along one side, so that the folded edges make a "V".   Do the same thing with another pair of leaf units, but turn them upside down when finished so that the "V" mirrors that from the first two units.  Sew these two sections together.

You now have one cathedral window (CW) block.  The folded edges make an "X" across the block, as above.  Make 9 of these.  You will need to join two of the CW blocks to make one CW rectangle.  Make 4 rectangles, leaving one square CW block for the center of the tabletopper.

Now we need to work on the corner squares.  Sew one leaf unit to one 3 1/2" background square so that the leaf unit's folded edges are tilted up from left to right as above.

Next sew a 3 1/2" x 6 1/2" background rectangles to the duo above, keeping the folded edges of the original leaf unit going in the right direction as seen here.  You now have a corner block (CB).  Make four of these.

To make the center, take the left over square CW block and add a 3 1/2" x 6 1/2" background rectangle to either side.  Press to the background fabric.  Then sew a 3 1/2" x 12 1/2" background rectangle to the top and another to the bottom of this.  You now have a square measuring 12 1/2" with the CW in the center.

So, what do we do with all this?

Assemble the first row of the tabletopper by sewing a corner block to a CW rectangle (2 CW's) and then add another corner block.  Keep in mind that we want these corner blocks to mirror each other.  You can place your corner blocks so that they look like mine, above, with the leaf units in the inner corners, or you can turn them so that the leaf units are in the outer corners.  Try them both ways to see what appeals to you.  Make 2 of these long rectangle units, one for the first row and one for the last row of your tabletopper.

Next sew one CW rectangle (2 CW's) to each side of the center block you created earlier.  Press towards the background fabric.  Then sew your first row to the top of this center unit and sew the last row to the bottom.  Make sure that you have a mirror image between top and bottom.  You can now see the subtle secondary pattern starting to emerge.

We aren't quite finished yet.  We still have to tack back those folded edges to create the cathedral windows appearance we all love.  This is just one 24" block, but several would make a stunning quilt.  You could also play with the placement of your basic units to make long table runners, zig zag paths for the CW's, smaller ones for candle mats, elongated ones for placemats, sew them into a purse or pillow, alternate rows of CW's with rows of background fabric, or place the CW's on point -- so many creative ways to use this simplified approach to the cathedral window look.

In the next few days, I will show you the folded edges all tacked back and perhaps even begin to experiment a little more with this pattern, trying it in reverse, or combining the units in some other fashion.  Try it for yourself!  Let your imagination go wild! 

PAINLESS CATHEDRAL WINDOWS

This idea is not original with me, but, having seen some quilts done this way, I have decided to spend a day teaching my guild members how to create the cathedral window look in a new way.  You can make any size block, any size quilt, any combination of colors, and any order of base and top pairings.  Here's how it starts. 

I wanted to make a 24" square table topper.  I had in mind four corner sections and a separate center with the cathedral windows in it, surrounded by my background color and then bordered by more cathedral windows.

I decided to use white as my background fabric and twelve 3 1/2" strips of Kaffe Fassett yummies.  This particular way of combining the fabrics will be the reverse of what you usually see in cathedral windows, where the outside (or top fabric) is white and the leaf (or arced) section is in colored fabric. 

Because I wanted a 24" topper, I divided my top into 8 x 8 sections in my square.  Each section, therefore, measured 3" x 3".  This allowed me to have a four section cathedral window block (finished size = 6") with the white peeking out from under the folded back colors.  But more of the design as the pattern emerges.

What you see above is cut from 3 1/2" strips, one from each of 12 fat quarters:  Eighty Kaffe Fassett squares 3 1/2 x 3 1/2", 40 white squares the same size plus four more 3 1/2" white squares for the corner treatments,  six white 3 1/2 x 6 1/2" rectangles and two white 3 1/2 x 12 1/2" rectangles.  You can use as many colors or fabrics as you wish, and nothing has to match if you want it to be nice and scrappy.  At the very least, however, use four different colors and eight different fabrics to get some texture into the finished project.

You fold each of the colored squares in half right sides out and press them so that they form triangles.  That's what you see so far in the first picture.

Next I placed two of the colored fabric triangles over each of the 40 white squares and pinned them so that the outer raw edges met and the center folds touched but did not overlap.  The last step for this first part of the preparation for assembling the cathedral window block is to sew the outer edges with a basting stitch about 1/8" in from the edge.  This will keep the triangles from slipping in the next part of the project, which I will publish in a few days.

Here's a picture of the first PCW block I made earlier this year, with some of the top triangles pinned back in preparation for sewing those edges to reveal the white fabric underneath.  This is NOT the design for our January project, but it gives you a hint of how things are going to evolve, in case your curiosity is killing you.