Zephyr QAL Week 3: Start Full Scrap Sets
Welcome! Who is ready to sew at last? Me!! Last week's post went over cutting both your background and feature fabrics and now we are going to start putting together our rails! This isn't a step-by-step tutorial; instead it's just some tips and tricks to help you out.
We are working with the full scrap sets this week, which means each scrap is going to make four rails, or one complete pinwheel. There are two questions to consider: how many scraps should I be sewing into rails and how do I decide which scraps to sew with this week?
How do I decide the order of scraps to sew each week? This is completely up to you. I've done it row-by-row and by color family, but this time I'm going by scraps I can get rid of completely. I made a little chart under my coloring sheet that lists the number of scraps I need in each color (dark blue, light blue, purple, and brown), then I pulled out all of my blue "almost fat quarter" scraps and got to work. I have larger pieces of blue fabric all over my sewing room, but these are the ones I wanted to get rid of first. I'm looking at each one in turn, cutting out a Zephyr block if it fits the color scheme (nothing too aqua or with colors other than blue or white), or putting it back if it doesn't work. If I do cut out the Zephyr block, I make a tally mark under the correct color to keep track.
A slight digression, but I am so dedicated to getting rid of the fat quarters that if a scrap is mostly gone after cutting the Zephyr blocks I'm going ahead and triple-cutting it:
So far I've cut ten Zephyr blocks and five of the scraps were used up completely! The extra squares are welcome additions to both my blue leaders and enders quilt and my postage stamp quilt. BUT, back to Zephyr! First, you will need to cut your scrap into the D and E pieces. The pattern gives a suggested cutting diagram for both square-ish and long-and-narrow scraps, but it will work with any shape you might have. One of mine was missing a huge quarter circle piece and I just cut my Zephyr pieces around it. If you have a scrap you like but it's not big enough for a full scrap set, just set it aside and use it to make a half scrap set later!
Cutting my fabric like the diagram shows means that all of my wavy lines will be horizontal in the finished block. I draw diagonal lines on my squares in opposite directions so I end up with one half-square triangle (HST) in each direction.
Once the HST are made, it's time for the most complicated part of sewing each rail: adding the B rectangle to the HST. You want to orient the HST so the background fabric is on the left and bottom sides of the square.
Next, sew the C rectangles to the E rectangles. If you are using directional fabric, you need one C each on the top, bottom, left, and right. Otherwise, you can just grab and sew without worrying about how things are oriented.
Finally, sew the two halves of the rail together. If you are using directional fabric, you'll need to make sure the prints line up in each half.
You should have four identical rails from each scrap that you started with. So if you sewed four scraps for a throw-sized quilt, you should have sixteen rails right now. Keep the rails sorted by scrap so it's easy to find matches when we start assembling our quilt tops next month!
And that's it! Please reach out and ask me any questions you might have after reading this post through and starting to sew your rails - next week's post will be a Q&A post for anything I've missed. And if there's no questions, I'll just skip the blog post!
Congratulations to Kirsten, @honey_badger_mom, the Week 2 prize winner! This week I dug deeper into my stash and found two more fun prizes: two half yards of ombre confetti fabric plus a 5" remnant and some pretty floral fat quarters. I'm going to give you two weeks to get sewing; I want to see your rails! Post a photo on Instagram with the hashtag #zephyrqal and tag me @bluepipdesigns to share! In two weeks, I'll randomly select one post to win a prize of your choice.
As a reminder, the current pattern version of Zephyr is 1.1. If you need this updated version of Zephyr, you can email or DM me (via Etsy or Instagram) with your email and Etsy order number and I will send you a link to the updated pattern. If you still need to purchase the Zephyr pattern, it has been updated in my shop and new purchases will automatically receive the newest version!
Want to join the BluePip Designs mailing list for exclusive coupons, new pattern info, and quilt-along updates right in your inbox? You can do that here!
Comments