Throwback Thursday

Quilts on the Double

Several years ago our quilt group had a workshop run by one of the members. She had attended a workshop run by the authors of a book called Quilt on the Double. The patterns that this book contained involved sewing strips of cloth together, slicing the units up and then using the units to make different types of quilts. For my quilt I used yellow and green fabric for my 3.5” (I think) strips and purple for my 1.5” strips. 

That is a rather poor explanation of the method. To have made just one of the quilts was a very wasteful procedure given the amount of fabric that would then not be used in the quilt. The units cut out were triangle units. As well as the two different triangle units that were cut out (called Tops and Tails respectively … I think) there were several other bits left over. I didn't buy the book the patterns came from. I got the units made at the workshop but didn't get back to putting them together (the workshop occurred just before the terrible bushfires that swept through Victoria. Our group became involved in making quilts that were sent down to the people who had suffered in these fires.)

I had all the pieces though and some notes from the workshop but when I was doing my UFO busting stint a couple of years ago I had no idea what to do with the pieces. Fortunately my neighbour and friend Sharyn had bought the book (and had completed both her quilts) and she loaned me the book so I could finish off the quilts. The book contained a good number of different ways the units could be used to make very different quilt tops. I was keen to use as many of my units as I could and not have to buy any more fabric.

This picture is of the first top. This is before I put borders on it.

Here it is afterwards. The outer border was made from some of the little left over bits (the book had a name for them. The corner stones were also made from left over bits – really cute little pinwheels.

This was the “Tops” design and this arrangement was spools… I think. I really am going to have to see if I can find my notes

The pattern in the quilt ia 3 dimensional to me. The yellow and green crosses seem to pop in and out

The Point of Sunny Tails.

This is the second quilt made from the left over bits from the first quilt. 

Despite not wanting to add too much extra fabric I ended up doing so because I really liked this design. The fabric came from my stash so didn’t break my fabric diet at the time. I was very pleased with the way I extended the pattern into the border. I did have to do a bit of unpicking of some of the units and restitching them in order to get the right  number of units required in the various colours. For some reason I had extra green and not enough yellow.