White Triangle Quilt: The Process
Piecing strips together
Since I left my job in November, I have been sewing a lot, and am currently working on one of my absolute favorite projects. It will soon be a 5 foot square quilt made of 648 white cotton triangles. Each triangle was cut from the flags that hung at our wedding last June which were made by our friends and family.
The flags sat on my shelf for over six months while I struggled with the pattern. Initially, I thought of chevrons. I did a small sample, and the pieces were too small and subtle, and the proportions were off. I thought at one point I would keep the flags as their full rectangular size, but that would have been too chaotic because they ranged from 4″x4″ to 8″x10″. Finally, I cut as many 4″ squares as I possibly could without knowing where I was going. Since squares are pretty boring, I cut each of those into two triangles and started playing. I divided the pieces into off white and bright white, and noticed that the stacks were roughly equal. I paired them together by sewing a seam on the diagonal to create over three hundred dual tone squares.
Lots of little squares (more contrast shown for graphic purposes)
I quickly realized that the possibilities were endless, so I laid out a few options and waited for Nik to get home.
Nine patterns options (graphics have more contrast than the actual fabrics)
We picked the middle pattern on the bottom row, and I started piecing. You can see how the bright white/off white fabrics look in the photo below. It’s much more subtle than the graphics above, which I love.
It took a full day to make the squares, another two days to sew the squares into horizontal strips 18 at a time, and yesterday I sewed all 18 strips together to finish the quilt top and basted the top to the batting & brown backing fabric. I plan to do the quilting by hand, so that might take a while, and then I will bind it all together. Hopefully I’ll have it finished by our anniversary!!
Basting the layers together
Playing with the designs in Illustrator made me wonder what else I could do. Now I’m excited to find more fabrics I love so that I can make another 324 squares to make one of these. I especially love the one in the lower left corner.
The quilts I will make one day
Other blankets I’ve made:
