Hargrave Harriet - Senior Year: A Skill Building Course in Quiltmaking

A Course in Quilting

A fresh new approach to uncovering the details that make quilting fun and rewarding. As we progress, you will be challenged to make stunning quilts using the skills achieved in earlier courses.

Quilting 401Senior Year

Your senior year takes you into the most exciting of all designsstars. We will explore stars made using 60 and 45 angles, as well as hexagons, Tumbling Blocks, Log Cabins, blocks with partial seams, and more. Drafting is a very large part of this process. Now you are ready to learn how to make those really stunning quilts you never thought you could!

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Carrie by Harriet. This mother could not be more proud of her daughter, who took on this project as a new quilter. Even though Carrie grew up in a quilt shop, her life was on a very different course until she decided to take over running the family businessa 30-year-old quilt shop. From learning basic precision in Volume 1 to the quilts in Volume 3, her piecing and quilting have improved by leaps and bounds. For someone who never wanted to be a quilter, she has surpassed my expectations and has made me very proud of her abilities. Dont think it has come naturallymany, many hours behind the machine doing things she really didnt want to do have paid off huge dividends in her skill level. We hope these books convince all the people out there who dont think they can do thisCarrie has proven that the processes throughout the books work!

Harriet

Preface

Y ou are holding the fourth in a series of six books. The purpose of the series is to build your quiltmaking skills on a firm foundation of basic skills, from beginner to advanced. Volume 1 laid the foundation for all of the successive books. If you have not worked through Volume 1 entirely, we strongly suggest that you do so first. These books are not all-inclusive. This fourth book relies on a more advanced set of skills to achieve the precision necessary to experience success with the patterns. We cover set-in piecing, Y-seam piecing, and partial seam piecing techniques, which require accurate sewing and extremely good pressing skills. If you run into any problems and have not worked through the entire series, we suggest that you stop and go back for summer school, brush up your skills, and then try again. These quilts take time and patience; so dont try to hurry, falling back into shortcut techniques just to speed up.

Introduction

I f you have worked through the previous three volumes of Quilters Academy, you have likely seen a vast improvement in your skill level. If you started as a new beginner, we are confident that you are experiencing the joy of having a toolbox of techniques that work and allow you to enjoy the process of quiltmaking.

We both remember our senior year in college as being the most fun of all four years of undergraduate work. The classes were challenging, allowing us to put into practice all the basics we had learned up to that point. The same is true with this series of courses. Volume 4 will put into practice the previous precision and drafting exercises you have learned up to now.

We are going to work with blocks and designs that utilize 45 and 60 diamonds, as well as hexagons, Log Cabintype blocks, odd-shaped pieces, and more. As you progress through these classes, the blocks and techniques will get more difficult and time-consuming. We are starting with the 60 angles of hexagons and diamonds, as we feel they are the easiest to piece and a good warm-up to the more complicated 45 diamonds.

We have heard from many quilters over the course of the books becoming available. They stated that even through they thought they were accomplished quiltmakers, they still learned a lot by working through each book in order. Each lesson in each of the books has been designed to be a skill builder, preparing you for the next, more difficult process.

Once you have mastered the concepts in Volume 4, you will be more than ready for Volume 5 Medallion Quilts. In Volume 5, everything from Volume 1 through Volume 4 will be put into play to teach you to design and construct a wide variety of borders, as well as your own original medallion quilts. For now, enjoy the adventure into diamonds and stars!

Harriet and Carrie

A uthors note: We recommend that you make at least one block of every shape and pattern presented in the following lessons, just so you know the processes involved. We know these are not quick and easy; as you progress through the classes, each block will build on the previous one. If you skip hexagons or Tumbling Blocks because you dont care for them, you will likely run into some problems with the LeMoyne Star and Lone Star patterns. The skills in this book, as in the previous volumes, build on each other. We include some fun projects like placemats, table toppers, bed runners, and tea cozies to keep the projects small and doable, rather than overwhelming and time-consuming. The point is to learn the techniques, not spend weeks on each project. You will find that these are long-term projects, not project in a weekend style. Therefore, make sure you have extra yardage of all the fabrics you are using, especially background fabric. You never know when you will want to make something larger only to find the fabric is no longer available. We have also added quite a few illustrations of block and quilt designs for you to work with to spur ideas of your own. We really hope that you are starting to use your drafting and design skills to come up with your own original designs. Colored pencils can be your best friends. Use the worksheets in Volume 2 when you can to help place the blocks in different setting situations. Have fun creating!

LESSON ONE:

Introducing 60 angleshexagons

We are starting with hexagons, as they are the base shape for 60 diamonds and are much easier to construct than 45 angles. Consider this a good warm-up for things to come. You might know this shape from the Grandmothers Flower Garden quilt that was so popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

It is also the gold standard of antique British quilts; the British are known for their hexagon quilts. The Japanese also excel at designing with hexagons.

note

The hexagon, equilateral triangle, and 60 diamond shapes below are all in the 60 family.

60 family of shapes

Where do these different shapes come from?

Different shapes derived from hexagons

The measurements for these shapes seem to have nothing in common with each other. If you measure from flat side to flat side, you get one measurement; if you measure from point to point, you get another.