Piecing with a Twist!

Finally!  

As promised, here are pictures of my finished "Twister" Tree top ..... 

37" by 42-1/2"

....and its own little Mini-me!

11-1/2" by 13-1/2"

Here they are together so you can get an idea of the truly tiny size of this little Mini-me tree quilt =^..^=

What a fun way to learn how to use the Twister Tool!!!

Our Guild sponsored the class which was taught by one of my most very favorite people, Miss Starr Howell.  Here we are, all of us working like little bees....

We started with squares like this...

and then we used the Twister Tool to cut out "twisted" squares, like so...

We had to be very careful to turn them all exactly the same direction and keep them in the exact order.  Starr advised us to lay them in order on a 6x24" ruler as we cut each row, which helped considerably!  

Then we were able to just take the ruler to the sewing machine and sew the rows together without getting confused.  Easy peasy!  One note here - we had to be careful because cutting them "twisted" like this meant the edges became bias edges!  But even so, they went together pretty easy and quickly.

When I sewed all of the "twisted" squares back together, I ended up with this...

How cute is that????

Here is a closeup of the way my scrappy backgrounds came together to make it look like snowflakes ... I love it!!!

And this is the border fabric I finally chose to go with.  You can't tell these true colors on the full quilt picture.  It was a challenge to get those large elements to work, but I was happy with the result.

Of course, we only had time enough to work on our large trees in class.  But for those of us who wanted to make tiny trees too, Starr gave us excellent instructions on how to be oh-so-careful to not cut too far into the surrounding fabric.  She advised us to cut "close" to the ends and then use a pair of scissors to cut the final little bit.

When I was done cutting out all the large squares, I had this sweet little pile of squares left over......=^..^=

When I got around to cutting these down into 2-1/2" squares, I saw why it had been so important to take such care.  In some cases, I barely shaved off some threads to get the square...

Because these little squares ended up on the bias, they were a real challenge to sew together and then cut with the 1-1/2" Twister Tool.  I thought I had taken a few pictures of that, but it doesn't seem as though I did.  I actually had to block it to size before I put the borders on because it wanted to lay pretty wonky :*)  Here you can see all the seams on the back of it...

 It feels heavy and dense like a quilt even before it's quilted!  

I hope my adventures in Twisting have inspired you to grab the tool and begin playing with your own Twisty quilts!  I will leave you with some pictures of some of the other Twister quilts Miss Starr has made which she shared with us the day of class.  I really want to make these too!!! 

So go out there and GET TWISTIN' !!!

Hugs & Blessings,
Teresa
=^..^=

Design Wall Monday - August 6, 2012

We've been very busy here at our house this past week!  My poor husband blew out his knee on Tuesday and had to undergo arthroscopic surgery on Friday.  Poor dear is hobbling around on crutches and getting very bored with no activity!  And this weekend my daughter and granddaughter drove in to visit, and the three of us girls went school shopping to take advantage of the tax-free weekend.  I'd forgotten how much fun it is to shop for back-to-school things :*)

On my Design Wall .... I thought I would be done with Raney Days & Mondays last night, but it just didn't turn out that way.  I realized that my Twister Tool class is THIS Tuesday afternoon after Guild and that I had not done any of the fabric planning or cutting, much less sewing the pieces together as assigned - yikes!!!  So I had to put aside Raney Days for a few hours while I took care of the preparation for the Twister class project.  Today, I'll get Raney Days to the point that it is all ready for quilting, and sew up the squares for the Guild project.

The Twister Tool project is a Christmas-in-August type of project, which works really great for me, because I tend to put Christmasy things off too long and end up with no quilty projects done in time for the season.  *sigh*  However, this year I'll have a Twister Tree to display!

So far this is what I managed to get done yesterday.  All the 5" square pieces are cut and arranged in their places.  I should be able to get all the squares sewn together today and be ready for class Tuesday.  Whew!!! I know it doesn't look like much now, but it will look much better the next time you see it.......(wait for it...)

I used a lot of sparkly fabrics in this, to give it extra pizzazz!  These are for the ornaments and the star at the top of the tree.....

Then I went really scrappy with a lot of gold sparkly neutrals for the background - I just LOVE scrappy, don't you?!?  And these sparkly fabrics are some of my favorites in my stash.  I realized as I was cutting that I'm running low on them and need to restock :*)

 

The fun thing about this project is that if you are very careful in cutting the shapes, you can then use the tiny Twister tool and get a minature tree out of the remaining pieces!  Two trees instead of just the one - that just makes my thrifty soul sing!!!  And just wait until you see that cute little teeny-tiny Christmas Tree!! :*D

I have finally begun work on a new Calendar Quilt.....

Kim Schaeffer's August quilt from her book, Calendar Quilts

I don't know if I can finish it up in time to hang this month, but it is one of my favorite quilts in the collection, so I've decided to give it a priority and see what happens.  I'm really trying to practice not rushing through a project just to get it done, and making sure that I take time to enjoy the journey.

So far, all I've managed to get done is trace off the pattern onto the fusible, so I definitely have my work cut out for me - pun entirely intended!  :*)


Both the Twister Tree and the August Calendar Quilt are part of the 2012 NewFO Challenge for August going on over at Cat Patches.  Barbara would love a visit from you, so click on the cute button on my sidebar to check out the fun over at Three Cats Ranch! =^..^=

What's on your design wall today?  Go to Patchwork Times to see some of the amazing quilts others are creating :*)

Also linking up with....
Linky Party at Quilting by the River
Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story
Try It On Tuesday at Jo's Country Junction
TNT Thursday at Happy Quilting

Hugs & Blessings,
Teresa
=^..^=