Waves Quilt Tutorial

with
Jenny Doan

Waves Quilt Tutorial

Quilt Size: 86" x 103"
Time: 12 minutes
Waves can be scary. In 1958, a landslide triggered a 1,700+ foot wave in Lituya Bay, Alaska. And here’s the wildest part: A little fishing boat was carried atop that wave, clear up the side of the forested mountains and back. But somehow, the boat, the fisherman, and his 8-year-old son came away completely unscathed! So, yeah, waves can be super-dee-duper scary. But Jenny’s waves? They’re just fun!

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video transcript

Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the Missouri Star Quilt Co.. And I’ve got a fun project for you today. You know a lot of my things come about because I ask the question, what happens if. And I’ve been having fun playing with our new drunkard’s path template. And I thought what happens if I add a half square triangle to the drunkard’s path template. And so that’s what this quilt is. It’s made of this big block right here. We’ve got a half square triangle and two drunkard’s paths and let’s take a look at this quilt because it’s really fun. Isn’t this great? Such a different look. I just try to imagine what it would look like if I’d done it smaller, tinier, you know, what would happen here. It’s got a real modern look and a lot of movement to it. And so it’s just fun. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one packet of ten inch squares. And we have used Grand Illusion by Katya Hoffman for Windham Fabrics. You’re also going to need the same amount of ten inch background squares because we’re going to put one with each one of those. Then what we’re going to do is we’re going to have this first inner border out here. The inner border is going to be ¾ of a yard. Our outer border is a 6 ½ inch strip. And you’re going to need 1 ¾ yards for that outer border. So the backing on this quilt is beautiful. We’ve used the marble purple. And if you’re going to use the 45 you’re going to need 9 ¼ yards of fabric for that. Or you can use one big piece of the 108 fabric. And you’ll need 3 ¼ yards of the 108. So it’s a lot of backing but it’s a big quilt. This quilt is 86 by 103 ½. I mean this is a big quilt. So it’s a lot of fun to make something big every once in a while. Sometimes we just need something nice and big, fun for our bed. Alright so let me show you how to make this.

We’re going to make two blocks. The first one we’re going to start with is going to be our half square triangle. And that’s going to be right here. And with the half square triangle what we’re looking for is a 9 ½ inch size. And so we’re going to take our two squares. We’re going to draw the line corner to corner. And of course I used my ruler for this. And I”m going to draw that line. It doesn’t matter what you use to draw the line because we’re going to cut right through it, it’s going to be on the inside. Then we’re going to sew a quarter of an inch on either side of that line. Now I have already done that here on this. And so then what we’re going to do is we are going to take our, our rotary cutter and just cut right on that line that we drew, corner to corner. And you can see I’ve stitched this down already. And then we just have to iron these open like this. And so we’re going to start with our color on the top and press back. So let me just start here, color on the top and press back. We want that seam to be, our fabric seam to be on the dark side of the fabric so it hides in there. If we press that seam toward the light then it’s going to, the seam will show so that’s why I always say, press to the dark side. Alright there’s our other one. So now you’re going to make 20 half square triangles and you’re going to make 20 of our drunkard’s path units. And let me show you how easy this is to do.

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to stack two together. So I have a background right here, I mean a background and a print. We’re going to lay them right on top of each other. And we’re just going to cut them in pairs. Now to do this I like to center the circular part of my template right in that corner. And then I’m just going to take my rotary cutter and cut right just close to that edge. Just keep it right on that edge like that. And those come apart. Now this one we know is right. On this other part out here we want this to be 9 ½ so we have our 9 ½ line right here. And we’re going to lay it on here. And we’re going to look and see what happens to our fabric. Now you see it’s very little waste because what we want to do is we’re going to cut off these two little tiny ends and just this tiny little scoop out in the middle. Do you see that, I mean, it’s just not even an ⅛ of an inch you’re cutting off. So because I’m left handed, I”m going to flip it around so I can cut it the right direction. And I’m going to go ahead and put this on here. And again we have our little measurements. We want it to be 9 ½ because when you sew two squares together to make half square triangles take that in a quarter of an inch on either side, it’s going to end up 9 ½. And we want these to match. So I’m lining this up on the 9 ½ line. And what I’m going to do here is I’m going to cut off this little edge here. I’m going to cut off this little edge here. This one isn’t, I didn’t get this facing exactly the right way for me. But this little curve right here is now in a perfect position for me to cut it. And so again I’m just going to lay my rotary cutter right along that inner edge and just come around. And look at the tiny little piece. That’s all it is. But it’s so cool to me that both of those fit on a ten inch square. Alright.

So now what we want to do is we want to put opposites together so we have our outer piece here of color and our inner piece here of white. And we’ll do the same thing with the other one. We’ll have the color in the middle. And we’ll put the white on the outside. And so we’ll get two blocks out of each cut. And what I like to do on this is I like to kind of fold these in half and finger press right here. And fold this one in half and finger press. So I know, I know where they’re supposed to meet up. I also am going to put a little pin in here. I know, you guys, I’m not much of a pinner but on this big curve this is super helpful. So I’ve got where my finger press is lined up exactly and then I’ve got my pin in there. Now I know this looks like it’s not going to work, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to turn this like this. And we’re going to start. We’re going to line up these edges and start. Now this concave piece right here, we want to put that on the bottom. Somehow that just helps. It makes it a little easier. And so I’m just going to line up these two right here, lay them right on top of each other and start. And this is one of those things where you just want to go nice and slow. I was afraid of curves for a really long time but it’s one of those things where it’s like practice makes perfect. So I go a few stitches and I just pull those edges together so they just line up so nice. And then I just keep going, keep it at a quarter of an inch. And then pretty soon you’re right to where the pin is. And you just want to make sure that you don’t sew over that pin. That’s a no no. I’m going to pull that pin out right now. Stick it back in here. And then I’m going to just use my fingers and pull these two seams together on this other side. Because I know that my middle has matched up. So this should fit just perfectly. Keep going. Alright. So you can see right here, my ends aren’t exactly together but what I’m going to do is I’m going to iron that and see if that matters. It shouldn’t matter too much but we’re going to see. Now I like to lay this part right here, my colored part, and just iron over the circle. Oh my gosh, it’s perfect. Look how awesome that is. It’s just perfect.

Alright so just, you know, just because we can we’re going to do it one more time so you can see that this was not a trick of the camera, that we really can do this. And I really was a little afraid to begin with but I had to slow down. I have to admit, I had to slow down. And I had to just start sewing a little bit at a time to get my curves to line up. Take a little bit more, you know, just pay a little bit more attention. Alright so on these two right here, line them up again right at the edge. I’ve got my concave piece on the bottom. And concave is, you know, that’s this part. The part where the circle goes in. I’ve got it under there and I just start with a few stitches and then I line up. This first little bit is the tightest part. And I watch my quarter of an inch line, make sure this isn’t rumpling under here. And you will get faster at this. Although you know speed isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when you’re doing something like this. Alright now here we are almost to the end and I’m going to try to make these ends match up perfectly. You know what, this is where a stiletto would come in handy. That’s one of those kind of little pokey sticks where you can hold something down so that your fingers don’t go in under there. But I’m feeling pretty good about these ends. Here’s this one and here’s that one. Pretty good, huh? Alright now let’s go ahead and iron this down. Again I’m going to put my, my circle to the top. And it’s just beautiful. Look how gorgeous they are. Those are gorgeous curves if I do say so myself. And we all love some nice curves.

Alright so now let me show you how I put these together. So there are two different blocks on here. One block has the half square triangle colors to the center with the white drunkard’s paths coming in. The other block is just the opposite. So it’s got the colorful drunkard’s paths coming in the middle and the white part of our half square triangles. You’re just going to sew them together like a big four patch. And let’s look at these right here. So these are our blocks right here. And so this one has the white, the bigger white part of the drunkard’s path and those come into the middle with the colors of our half square triangle. And the next one is just the opposite and so it’s got the colored parts of the drunkard’s path. But that’s what gives it this cool kind of criss cross pattern on here. And so when you go to put them together you just want to lay them out like a nice big, you know, four patch. And so we’re going to put, we’re going to put this together like this so it’s going to have our, our white in with the half square triangle color. And here’s this one over here. And then we have to find one of these where the white is in the middle. Here’s this one. And we’re just going to sew this together. So then you’re just sewing great big long seams. You know, these are like ten inch seams on here. This one and this one. And then you sew the center seam and it’s going to make one great big block like this. And you need both sets, you know, and then you’re going to put them together. So let’s count our blocks right here. We’ve got one, two, three, four, across by five down. And that’s what makes it such a nice great big quilt.

And I just think it’s really fun to see what happens if. And our what happens if on this was what happens if we put a half square triangle with a drunkard’s path block. And you’ve seen. It’s just awesome. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Co.

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