Quiltville Custom Quilting
http://www.quiltville.com

Old Tobacco Road!

~A Quiltville Mystery Quilt!!~
© Bonnie K Hunter.

Part 4

Chloe giving her approval on Old Tobacco Road!

It's LAYOUT TIME!! If you've made it this far over Labor Day Weekend, 2008, I applaud you! That is lots of sewing and lots of little pieces to get you this far. Now you will start seeing the fruits (or is it the CROPS?) of your labors!

This is my EQ drawing of the layout. Of course, in EQ you really can't draw BRICKS, at least I couldn't figure out how to insert soild bricks in between our pieced-unit bricks, so I had to color in two square representing bricks! The one on the left shows scrappy 4 patches and pinwheels, and the one on the left...more controlled. See why the 4 patches need to go a certain way in the pieced bricks? They chain down the length of the quilt from top to bottom, while the bricks go on the diagonal! Is this cool or what? It's like rows of tobacco growing with furrows in between.

For this step you need to cut:
(108) 3.5" X 6.5" Bricks from Browns/Rusts/Blacks
(6) 3.5" squares from the same Browns/Rusts/Blacks

This is where the quilt top becomes a design wall or a design floor project. We are going to start in the upper left corner and build this quilt in diagonal rows to the bottom right corner. The edges will "zig zag" and we will trim them up after the center is pieced.

Look at the upper left hand corner and start laying out your pieces like this. The rows will alternate solid bricks with pieced units and each row will get longer until we reach the quilt center. I laid a brick in the upper left corner,but really, that could be a square. So much got trimmed off in the trimming process. But I learned as I went! (this is where you see the Quiltville Thought Process at work! On the floor on my hands and knees, playing with my pieces!)

Sew the units into rows, and then sew the rows together to build the quilt center. When joining rows, you will want to be sure that the pinwheel units are in a straight line down the quilt. It looks kinda funky with those zig zag edges hanging out there, but don't worry. We'll clean them up later.

It's getting closer! Can you see (even with a slightly blurry pic?) How it is getting there? The "length" of the quilt is 18 pinwheels. The width of the quilt is 5 pieced rows in between 6 rows of diagonal bricks. I like to piece the quilt into rows, keeping the quilt top in two halves. Then I join the two halves together. This keeps the top from being too unweildy, and the most bulky seam I have to do is the one that joins the halves together.

Bottom corner layout....see how it comes down to one square in the bottom right? And yes....there is more COW fabric in this quilt! I swear, this is the fabric that just won't die! I used up lots of it in backs of quilts in my Scraps & Shirttails book. It's really funny when I do a trunk show because people start counting cows after a while..*LOL*

Trimming Time!

If it helps you, at this point you can give your quilt top a good pressing with some spray starch or fabric sizing. We are going to be trimming those bricks off on their bias. Whatever you do...BE GENTLE. Let the heat and the weight of the iron work on their own without a lot of smooshing around because you don't want to stretch anything out of whack. Lay the ruler against the upper right hand corner of the quilt top with the edge of the ruler against the flat spot at the top of the pieced bricks column,. Run the side edge of the ruler up through the diagonal corners of the bricks and trim. Most of these trimmings are quite large, and they went right into my "odd sized triangles" bin!

See how much I lost of that upper left hand brick I started out with? This is why you really only need a square there. Live and learn by doing!

And here it is! Old Tobacco Road! If you are just wanting the couch size quilt, all you need to do from here is quilt and bind! You can also add simple borders if you don't want to continue on to making the quilt a full sized.

If you DO want to make the quilt bigger, and are up for more adventurous (not to be confused with monotonous!) piecing, hang with me....we'll do borders in Step 5!

Chloe, Quilt Control Manager!

Click HERE for Part 5, the Finale!