Working with one fabric made from stripes

And I thought my journey making quilts from one fabric was complete. Oh No.....   I'm now exploring stripe fabrics.  In the case of these two quilts - one striped fabric and 60deg triangle.

This is my first quilt - Tunnel Vision.



Tunnel Vision close up

Tunnel Vision

 

 





When choosing my fabric I went for stripes with a bit of interest and not totally regular.  I found I couldn't use my long ruler to cut my fabric.  Stripes are not necessarily printed straight on the grain so I had to free-cut with my rotary cutter along the stripes - down the length of the fabric.  In this case 3.7 metres.  This did take time and lots of patience but the result was worth it.
The stripe repeat determined my 60 deg triangle size - in this case 8".  I did find this size fiddly to handle.  Placement of triangles was really quick.  Sewing them together was tricky.

After lots of un picking I developed a formula that worked for me.

Lay out triangles matching lines.

Start pinning from the block center point and on a flat surface.
Ease fabric to line up your stripes.



Quality of pins if important.  The finer the pin - the flatter it sits in your fabric.
The yellow pin is a standard quilters pin.  The brown glass is the finer Clover quilters pins
which are my preference.

Sew from the center to the outside of your block.  Use a leader fabric regardless
of whether or not you have the scissors feature on your machine.
Using a leader keeps the center point straight.
Iron blocks in the same direction so the seams can butt together nicely when sewn together. 

Match up points and stripes, pin then sew.

I also noticed that by using a small stitch length (1.8) and sewing slow, it helped prevent my stripes from moving away from each other.

Siren Song is my second piece.


Triangle size approx. 4".
If you double click on this photo you will see better detail.

Quilting detail.  I used various colours of thread to enhance
the stripes.
 

My exploration of stripped fabric hasn't finished.  I now have a collection of striped fabric waiting for me to chop.  I will be trying out different shapes.

Happy quilting.