We have a Pretty in Pink episode for you today.

I designed Meadow Whirl to celebrate pink and polka dots, as well as my love of floating patchwork.

We'll explore why you should use triangles, not quick pieced hourglass units, and show you the best cuts for the setting units.

Let's piece in pink on today's episode of Love of Quilting.

Funding for Love of Quilting is provided by.

The Bernina 990.

If it can be imagined, it can be created.

APQS longarm quilting machines allow you to express your creativity.

APQS quilt forever.

The Warm Company manufacturer of battings and fusibles for quilts, crafts and wearable arts.

Panasonic, maker of the 360 degree freestyle, cordless iron, magic quilting and crafting collection, ironing sprays, and more.

Hello and welcome to the 4700 series of Love of Quilting.

I'm Sara Gallegos and I'm Angela Huffman and Angela.

You have quite the pretty in pink palette here.

I am so into pink right now.

It's a little silly.

It's even why Look, the nails that I chose to accommodate all the pink with the little polka dots.

I'm also into polka dots right now here.

adorable I'm not sure what this phase is called in life, but I'm in the pink polka dot phase I like.

Are we going to have to start matching our nails to our quilt?

Some theme now?

Whatever inspires you, right?

So this is Meadow Whirl.

And this is my latest quilt and I love it, I love it, I love it because of all of that pink.

So I have a I have a friend and she prefers not to have a white, neutral, a white background on her quilts because she has black cats.

And so she wants, a color for her background.

And so I started thinking about, like, if I were to choose a color, what would I choose?

I'm like, well, pink.

Obviously.

And so I designed this quilt so that the blocks actually float a little bit so that you can't really see the sashing.

There is sashing, you can't really see the outside kind of setting.

Triangles are setting triangles, but everything kind of flips very wide.

And I think that helps to keep them separated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we're going to start.

It's a two block quilt.

So this is the first block.

And it's a kind of a pinwheel looking block.

And then this is the secondary block.

So we're going to start with this block and this block.

The unit is an hourglass.

It is a four color hourglass.

Okay.

Now, you may have made hourglasses in the past.

And typically when you make an hourglass, you take two half square triangles and you place those two half square triangles, then right on top of each other, you mark down the middle and so on each side of the middle.

And that's actually what I have right here.

Now the problem is let's open this up.

I'm just going to cut right on that that mark line.

Here's the difficulty with this method though, is that when you make your lovely little here, I'll put mine in the same direction.

When you make your, your hourglasses, the, they're they're mirrored.

Mirrored.

Yeah.

They're mirrored as it's.

And there's no way to spin it to make it work.

So we've got pink on both sides but our florals in a different spot.

So that makes a mirrored unit.

And so it needs to be these need to be the same.

So here I'm going to put my dark pink in the same position.

Your dark pink is.

So you can see that they they don't wind up in the same spot.

And that would be that would take away from your spinning effect throughout the quilt.

It wouldn't work.

It would not work.

It would take away from lots.

So, so so that's not the way we're going to be making these, hourglass units.

Instead, we're going to actually use triangles to put them together.

And so I'm just going to, lay these out and these are going to go together that way.

My white is going to go here.

And then that light pink is here.

So let's see, I think I'm going to put these two together.

So I'm going to hand these to you and let you run a quarter inch seam there.

Okay.

And then I'm going to in here.

Yeah.

What is that?

What is the pink polka dot phase of life called?

I don't know the answer to that.

I haven't finished yet.

Wait till it hits you.

And then also, the white in this, fabric.

It has little bees and little honey.

Little, hexagons for the honeycomb.

Yeah.

To fly around all of the little, flowers.

It fits the meadow thing very well.

Well, and when I quilted it, I put a hexagon, I the whole thing's covered in hexagon, so it's all a little beehive as well, cuz I have a whole bunch of fun there.

Yeah, a little trim.

All right.

We got those apart.

Now take them over here to the pressing, station.

And I would like for the, And I'm just going to double check here.

I did where I put the seams towards this.

Floral first.

So I'm going to put that up on the mat facing me, and then I'm just going to kick that backwards, and I'm going to be kind of careful.

I don't want to knock anything here, out of skew because you are dealing with a little bit of a biased edge.

And then on this one, I'm going to actually put it so that it goes towards the light pink.

So I want it to go away from that white, fabric.

And now we'll put these together in that direction.

And because of the way that I press them, this now is going to nest together.

And then you can go ahead and put a quarter inch seam, down there.

So it's a 12.5in unfinished 12 inch finish block.

And I really wanted those two polka dot fabrics, the dark pink, the light pink, to play against each other.

But that light pink needs to be there because that's how you're going to float it.

Right?

With the sashes.

I like the polka dot for a neutral background.

So I did that on one of my closest go around, and it just gives you a little extra interest.

Yeah, yeah, I like it.

I have a friend who did an entire quilt and only dots like she collected dots everywhere she went.

And then she, Then she made a whole quilt.

Just a dot.

Is it very busy?

It wasn't because it was all, like, the same size dot to it.

It was really nice.

Okay, so we just put this seam, let's spin this.

Because if there's going to be a place where there's a lot of fullness, it's going to be in that center of this.

This hourglass.

So I just gave it a little twist and that'll pop the, stitches that are above the seam line that we just put in.

And now when I come over here to the mat, it should give us a little cutie a little, there it goes, there it goes.

Yeah.

So you're going to have to use the tip of the iron, to really get in there.

Nice.

But that little step will save you a lot of grief at the end, because if there's anywhere that your needle when you go to machine, quilt it in that.

Cute.

Yeah.

So cute.

Anywhere that the the, needle is going to have bulk it going through, it's going to be where all those seams come together.

And that makes that thing nice and flat.

Okay.

So let's lay this out and so this block together.

So those two and I do want to check that it might be I want you guys to check the size because it needs to be, a six inch.

So I'm just going to check this and get this trimmed down.

I do have a six inch, the ruler here that I'm just going to use as, like a template.

So I have my diagonal on the ruler on that diagonal seam, and I'm just going to, I've got a little tiny bit to trim off, but that little tiny bit will help your block be the appropriate size.

You want it to be.

Six and a half.

Six.

Oh, Sara.

You're right.

This is a 6.5in.

Okay.

It's a 6.5in.

Ruler that I'm using as a template.

So you're going to want to trim these down to 6.5in.

And that makes sense because the block is a 12, and a half inch.

Yeah, I don't actually there's a little tiny bit here that needs to be trimmed.

Otherwise we're good rulers with the extra half inch can be so tricky and deceiving.

Sometimes I have to count.

Yeah, yeah, I have to count.

All right, so here is our block.

And, these should actually nest a little bit for you too.

And you're going to do a quarter inch seam there and a quarter inch seam here.

So really the tricky bit about this is just, that you can't do your hourglass blocks in the way that you may be used to.

Right.

But if you've never spun a seam either, this is a great place to try them.

Get that little bit of gratification there, There.

So it really did, does give you a little bit of gratification, because I think it's pretty too when it is sitting there.

Am I sewing this edge?

You are.

Okay.

We're sewing that edge trader.

Oh yeah.

And do you typically when you're, like, taking it to your cutting station and coming back to your machine, are you like stacking them in the same direction so that you don't get yourself confused?

I do, and I lay them out on top of themselves and then compare to another quilt or the pattern, because somehow between the sewing machine, sewing pressing station and the ironing board seam, things happen.

Yes.

So there's that one.

And I press this, going in this direction.

Okay.

So I'm going to press these going in the opposite direction.

And that way these will nest.

And then we'll show these two together.

Beautiful.

So I just want to double check before we go.

We got it.

And again that will nest.

And I would actually put a pin or a clip or something in the center because it really is going to, show off this pinwheel a whole lot better.

If those actually do match.

They're in the center.

I'm glad you've got a pinwheel quilt here.

You know how much I love a pinwheel.

Yeah, yeah, I know you love a pinwheel.

Yeah.

And I like this one just because, I don't know, it's a pinwheel with a little kick on the end.

That dark, pink gives a little kick on the pin meal with flare.

I love the flare.

And that's that little corner edge to, I think, the pink with polka dot, phase.

That, I mean, is, is also there's a B parallel b, theme to my little world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not sure what that's all about.

Did you plants in the flower garden or something?

Maybe.

Maybe that's what it is.

All right, let's let's spend this.

Seem to.

So we just did this one.

So we're going to spend this one because that is also another spot where the center is going to be, very bulky.

If we can spread that bulk out, that will also help.

And again, the tip of your iron, getting in there and helping this, I will say that, if you have, a folding pen, that can help to, to help that if you see that that's there's a lot of bulk there.

And you don't want to press any little puckers.

And I know that sometimes when there's a lot of bulk, if we don't use that pen, that little bit of liquid helps to just flatten it out so you don't with the pucker right in the center of your quilt.

And then get the tip of that iron right inside there, and everything is going to go nice and flat, and then admire all of your hard work, because look at all of our spinning seams in the whole block.

Okay, so you're going to cover them all up now.

Yeah.

But feel that.

Yeah.

It's nice and flat that yeah makes a big difference okay.

So that is the pinwheel block okay.

Now you're going to love the spacer blocks.

So so simple.

So there's there's two units and a little here.

We were talking about bees.

Let's do the bee unit first.

So these are three and a half.

We're going to put them together just like that.

So that is your edge.

And I the other unit.

So there's one unit.

The other unit is this unit.

And they go together in the same way okay.

So I mean I can do these as well.

Okay.

Any switch side.

Goodness.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah.

Okay.

Next piece here in this is, you know, I have to confess, Sarah, that my gardening this year, I've been so stinking busy.

So my daughter got engaged.

that's exciting.

And so we've been shopping for dresses, and we've been, looking at caterers and, all of this stuff.

And so I'm going to press this one towards the green, and I'm going to press this one towards the floral.

So I'm going to put the green up.

So so here's what my gardening consisted of this year.

We got a potted plant, a potted flower, and we stuck it on top of the pot that it should go in.

And that's as far as we got.

That's as far as we got.

It was just way, way, way too much this year, with everything.

So I will.

Yeah, I will say that she found a very pretty dress.

And it was one of those when she walked out.

We absolutely knew, like immediately.

That's the dress.

The dress.

All right, so we had these little two patches, and then they're going to go with a 3.5in, little friend here.

Okay.

So I'm going to hand you that.

Yeah.

We went to like seven I think it was seven different places.

And each dress she was like, well I could change this and I could change that.

I could change this.

I'm like, we need to find the dress and the as is.

Yeah.

And not a dress that you are, just, making do with it.

So what kind of flowers is she thinking about?

I think she's looking at hydrangeas.

Pretty.

Yeah.

There's the next pair.

What a pretty choice.

Yeah.

So we went to Nashville to go dress shopping, and the place that we found the dress was an old wooden church.

This little wooden church.

It was the cutest thing ever.

And she, when she walked out with the dress on, it was like her entire, like, you kind of saw the dress, but you what you saw was her face.

Yeah, she knew that.

Wasn't she just.

Oh, she absolutely loved it.

It's really special.

All right, I'm going to press these towards that rectangle.

Okay.

So she's using hydrangeas and, she actually took a floral, a floral arrangement class in college.

And so she's like, oh, I'll just do that.

I'll just do I'll just do my flowers.

I'm like, honey, you're the bride.

You're not going to have time to do that.

Add more to your list, right?

No.

Okay.

This is how they get laid out.

Okay.

So, Yep.

There.

There you go.

Thank you.

So let's put these two together.

Here we go.

Let's put these two together.

So what about you?

Do you have a garden?

My house has a lot of landscaping.

Kind of all around.

And what I like about it is that most of it's pretty low maintenance.

So a lot of, like, wild tiger lilies, which are one of my very favorite flowers.

And we do have a fussy rosebush that takes a little bit of work.

Lots of hostas and just kind of things that are staggered to come out with different seasons and different parts of the season.

And like I said, pretty low maintenance.

But what's really funny is, you know, I've had my sweet little puppy, Nellie, and now we've gotten another little puppy named Guapo.

Yeah.

And he loves to just frolic on the hostas.

So all of the hostas around my front door are just like, smash.

And it's so cute.

Like.

And just don't even say anything about it because they'll come back.

And he just he just lays on them and then it might chew on one and it just bounces around and has fun.

I have a lime hydrangea.

And I have a puppy.

We just got a golden retriever.

And you have to watch because he'll run out there and just start chomping away right at the hydrangeas.

And I think that actually upsets his tummy.

Yeah, some of those are really not good for the puppies.

We gotta look it up and on it.

Yeah.

So so now we just ran out there and you know really watch okay.

So I press this one going this way towards the rectangle okay.

Press this one going this way towards this rectangle.

And now they are going to nest.

So I hope you see that it's a pretty simple block.

Do you have that pen there.

And I'll put a pen right here in the middle if you want.

That way everything will come together nicely.

Yeah, I this is the first, and this one will actually nest as well.

So you can probably feel that.

Feel it.

Okay.

What as you, as you sew that quarter inch seam.

I work hard at it for you.

Okay.

Good.

I believe in you.

But you're right.

You have to really pay attention because I'm used to what's not so hot for cats to eat, right?

But I wasn't up on what's so not so hot for dogs to eat.

Because this is your first dog, right?

Well, it's my first time that I've had responsibility for it.

Yeah, the other dogs that I've had in my life wearing, you know, dogs that were around me, but not my dog.

That's a whole different, whole different level.

A whole different.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

And his name is Rudy.

And he's, golden retriever, and he's so cute.

Storybook that just adds so much joy and happiness to your life, right?

I just feel like the little bound, little bouncing bodies with energy and joy and just not so great for the garden.

That's so great for the hostas.

Okay.

And we could go ahead and we could spend the same too.

So any place that you want to spend I'm just going to press this one up though.

But but, challenge yourself and see if you have places where you could spend.

Seems that would help the bulk.

I'm sure that little guys slipping under on you, though.

Thank you.

I can see it a different angle here.

All right, so, those are the only two blocks involved.

Easy.

Okay, so let's talk about, the side triangles and the corner triangles.

So I've got a big piece of fabric here.

Now you're going to need different sizes.

And I chose a small.

And it's all in the pattern.

What size square to start with.

Okay.

So let's do, let's do our corner triangles first okay.

And they kind of are the done the same way.

We're going to take our square and again look in the pattern for the size of square I chose a little bit smaller than what you would use for this quilt only so we could get it on this table.

Okay.

So we're going to, fold this square right sides together and finger press okay.

And then we're going to fold it one more time.

Oh.

And you could use an iron and finger press.

And then I'm just going to mark that.

Although you can see it nicely there.

I'm just going to mark that okay.

All right.

So for for the four corners we are going to cut this into.

I'm going to line up that line of clip for the white.

And you might need a big surface to do this.

Looks like it.

Yeah.

Especially if you decide to size these down.

Right okay.

So I did size them down because they are a big triangle.

Sure.

So that is the four corners okay.

Now for the side triangles.

There's one more cut to do okay.

And that's this direction here.

So they're all made of the same base square.

But you do one cut for corners.

There are two different sizes.

So to to do a little bit bigger.

Gotcha.

Oh yeah.

So look at the pattern because it's a generous square.

Yeah it's a generous square.

So let's cut it one more time.

And so again I'm just going to line up my ruler the length of my ruler here on the bottom edge of that triangle.

And then I want to make sure I'm going through the tip of the triangle up there.

And then what I'm going to cut I'm going to cut that.

And that is going to give us our sides.

Great.

So you got side triangles and you have a corner triangle okay.

Now between the blocks let's set this aside.

Between the blocks you've got the sashing.

And the sashing is doing a lot of super hard work.

Because that's what's making everything float.

Right.

And so these are, 3.5in, sashing.

And if you notice on the quilt, so it's definitely it's on point.

So you're going to put it together in row diagonal rows.

So you'll start with that setting triangle on the side.

And then if you notice this this particular block is rotated okay.

Yeah I did notice that.

And I like it because when you first look at you go, oh there's sashing with a green cornerstone.

No it's not.

Yeah.

I love it when you look at a quilt and you're not quite sure, what the grid is.

Yeah.

So, so just pay attention to how they're laid out, and, we can go ahead.

And so this one together.

So I will put that one on there.

So a 3.5in strip for that.

That sashing a lot of the quilts you do have some sort of little illusion to it.

Yeah.

I do think that, yeah, I think that, I just if I see a quilt, I can't find the grid or I can't find the block right away.

Everything in my brain lights up.

I want to stay.

Yeah, I want to figure it out.

And if it looks hard to do, then I'm like, okay, I want to figure it out, and I want to make it easier all at the same time.

Yeah.

And I will say that if you're doing a large quilt like this, the other thing you would, likely want to do is to, to sash these to precisely.

So you could actually put that 3.5in strip on the right side as you go of every block, and then you're not dealing with such long swaths, all together.

That's really handy, especially when you start introducing those setting triangles.

Yeah, a little wonky.

And the setting triangles to you know, you just need to treat them with little butterfly wings like little butterfly wings.

So treat them very gently.

All right.

So that one okay then we'll put this one together.

And the reason I did that 3.5in, it's kind of a weird size sashing.

Yeah, but it's the same as these.

Make sense?

So that these don't even show up.

Yeah.

You're.

I would really be freaked out if it was a little bit smaller.

Bigger?

That would not work as well.

Yeah.

And it was a challenge when I was designing it to figure that math out, to make sure that it did.

It did what I wanted it to do.

Neat.

Did you go into this thinking that you were going to make it in pink when you started designing it?

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

All about the pink and and can you pause right there?

I just want to show them.

So if you're coming down with your machine and this flips towards you, if you just pause the, sewing and let that flip back up, what you don't want to do is allow that to turn this way.

Because if you see, it's going to make this whole line not then lay flat.

So take some time as it goes, towards that foot and just help those seams go in the direction you want them to go.

I find that especially important with some feet that have the guide, the little bumper bowling for quarter inch seam.

Sometimes I feel like those guides, if they're not real round, flip those seam allowances over.

So you really have to stop and, you know, needle down foot up and make that little adjustment.

All right.

So let's do another one here.

Sarah.

I've got a pretty a longer strip here, but let's go ahead and cut this into a 12.5 and we'll put one more.

We'll put one more block together on there.

So just trying to see I didn't get enough room here.

Yep.

12.5.

I don't know that I can.

Do you have this other ruler here?

There you go.

Smaller ruler.

This is go up to 12.5.

It's only 12.

Darn.

This one's at 12.5.

How about I hold it and you, slice it?

Sure sounds good.

I'm going to reach across you.

Yeah.

There you go.

Okay.

There you go.

So another 12.5in strip of your sashing.

Teamwork makes the dreamwork.

All right.

And I'm going to go ahead and press this one.

And we'll put one more on so you can see if you've ever done a quilt like this where if you put one block on and then you add a piece of sashing on, and then you put one block on and then you put a piece of sashing on, it can slow down the process.

And so if you hear us talking about pre sashing, that's how you kind of speed all of this up.

Right.

So instead of doing block sashing, block sashing block sashing, it really would have been a a stack of blocks with sashing on one side.

So they're all done.

And then you're just putting them into rows.

Yeah.

Yeah okay.

So let's we'll go ahead.

We'll put sashing on this side okay.

And then you can put that one on okay.

So I would just say find a color palette that lights you up.

And it doesn't like anybody else that that could light you up and then use that as your background neutral print for the next quilt that you have to do.

This is the quilt specifically for you, Angela, I love it.

Thanks.

Grab a pencil, tips and other useful information.

Coming up next.

Sara.

This tip came in from Brenda Carr from Summerville, South Carolina.

She says, greetings from Somerville.

I'm a crochet knitter.

Counted cross stitcher and now a novice quilter.

I haven't quilted a full size quilt yet, so I purchased a quilt top at a yard sale to practice on.

The practice quilt is made out of vintage fabric.

It has some small holes and if you seams that came apart.

So.

Episode 4510 do it yourself quilt repair with guest Robin O'Neill came out at the right time.

I appreciated her tips for mending old quilts and I used her patch technique and love how it came out.

My tip is to mark the repair immediately, using a tiny safety pin and a piece of ribbon or embroidery floss.

When you're ready, you could locate that mending spot quickly.

P.S.

you're both invited to join me for crafts and wine.

My husband will make his awesome shrimp and grits.

I'm there.

Fabulous.

Thank you.

Okay, this tip is from Lori Compton of Toledo, Ohio, and she says whenever I need to transport my pins on my magnetic pin minder, I just pop the pin minder into a resealable sandwich bag.

And it's the perfect size.

All right.

Very good tip.

Yeah, we love it when you send your tips in.

And we hear from so many viewers that it's their favorite part of the show.

So if you have one to share with us, you can send it to the address on screen.

And of course, we love a little picture, a visual to go along with it.

Yeah, we'll see you next time.

Thanks so much.

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If it can be imagined, it can be created.

APQS longarm quilting machines allow you to express your creativity.

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Panasonic, maker of the 360 degree freestyle, cordless iron, magic quilting and crafting collection, ironing sprays, and more.