Shot cotton is beautiful but is loosely woven and at times has a mind of it's own. I wanted my stripes to all point in the same direction. Cutting triangles, sewing 2 colours together and getting a perfect square is a nightmare. It was time consuming, fiddly and annoying. I know how to lay 2 squares together, draw a diagonal line down one, sew on either side of the line and cut them in half but that doesn't help with stripes as they all end up pointing the wrong way
Anyway, I plodded along and was very happy with the beginnings as I lay the pieces out on the carpet. This may not end up the colour layout but I wanted to see if the idea was going to work.
I packed it up for the night and so far so good.
That night I went to sleep with no thought of the quilt on my mind.
In my sleep though, the shot cottons, stripes and pain of having to cut more triangles must have weighed heavily on my mind.
This is what I dreamt.
Take 2 squares, measured to the correct proportions. I wanted to end up with 3" squares so I cut 4.75" squares which would give me 4 lots of 3" squares with 2 x stripes going horizontally and 2 x stripes going vertically.
Place one square on to the other and pin it in the middle.
Now sew with the usual 1/4 " around all 4 sides
Iron it flat.
Carefully cut the fabrics through corner to corner diagonally both ways, trying to keep it still so its straight.
Open the triangles and iron them flat and you will have 4 squares as neat as can be!
As you can see, 2 have stripes going one way and 2 have stripes going the other.
These took me about a minute to put together whilst the ones I made the day before took much longer, wriggled and became askew.
Now most likely someone thought of this before, or maybe I read it in a book at one time or another but I really don't care. I am just so excited at how easy these were to make.
