tip: directional prints on flip-and-stitch corners

there are lots of times when i want a directional print to be facing a certain direction when i'm making quilt blocks or components: hsts, flying geese, chevron blocks, economy block corners, snowball coreners, diamond block corners (like wensleydale), and more. in the star cornerstones for "pinky stinky edna" i want the pieces in the star points to be going the same direction as the center block. this is completely personal preference in this case, but it's an effect i'm aiming for.

these corner triangles are made with the flip-and-stitch method where a smaller square is placed right sides together on the corner of the base, a diagonal seam is sewn to create a corner triangle, the excess of both fabrics is cut off 1/4" away from the seam, the new corner is flipped out to replace the part cut off, right side up, and is then pressed into place.

so how do i get the print going the same direction from each side of the star?

this is the square of the strawberry print i want to add to the bottom left corner of this two-strip sashing piece. the piece is vertical and i want the strawberries to run in the direction shown in the photo.

first, i identify the direction the piece should be facing and then the part i want to show in the corner. for this one, the part i want showing is turned in the bottom left as shown above.

if i fold the top right of the square under the bottom left corner, i can see how the shape will appear once sewn together, flipped down, and pressed into place. the bottom left corner my finger is on is the part i'll use to orient myself when putting the right sides of fabrics together for sewing the seam. 

when i turn the square over so right sides of fabrics are together, i want that bottom left corner to now be in the upper right corner. that same corner that was under my finger in the upper photo is now where my finger is pointing in this photo. no matter the orientation of the corner, the thing to remember is:

 the corner of the square that you want to be the finished corner piece of the triangle needs to be place in the diagonally opposite corner when you have the square flipped for right sides together. 

so again, here that means the lower left corner (when the square is facing up and is in the direction you want the fabric to appear in) becomes the upper right corner when it's flipped over and the fabrics are right sides together.

when fabrics are right sides together, i mark the diagonal line i'm going to sew the seam on. don't forget to mark and sew the seam for the bonus left-over hst from the corner, too. 

once both seams are sewn and the corner cut off, the new corner piece if flipped out and pressed into place. and you can press open your bonus hst as well. 

voila!

i figure out these little tips for myself, often through trial-and-error, then i tend to forget them when i need them again. i'm going to start recording them and gather them together on a tips page for myself so i can remind myself what i've learned when i need it again. maybe it'll help someone else, too.

wip wednesday 2026.5

i've been eyeballs-deep in house design this week, but i took a break one afternoon to put "pinky stinky" edna up on the design wall to get a feel for where we are and to make assemble easy when i get a chance to stitch some.  the available wall space could only fit 4 of 6 rows, the first of which is already assembled but needs a block moved. i was surprised we have enough 16 patch blocks for those rows. there is still a fat stack of 16 patch blocks to be completed, so i didn't think we'd gotten this far along. after seeing everything on the wall, i went over the remaining blocks sets and discovered i have far more than is needed to complete the quilt.

so the good news is d5 only needs to assemble 10 more blocks before i can complete the top. there are an additional 12 sets, which means she can make a small quilt of some sort incorporating them whenever she wants. that resolves our debate about what to name this project. i call it "pinky stinky" edna because i had dozens of problems when starting the quilt (almost all user error, not the pattern). it's pink and it was being stinky: pinky stinky. but d5 likes to call it "tired of pink," a comment i once made after several days of working on nothing but this quilt and i was craving some other colors. she thought that was really funny and a good name for the quilt. but i'm not tired of pink now and i don't think it's a very complimentary name, so i disagree. if she makes her own quilt with the extra blocks, she can call it "tired of pink" and i can call this edna "pinky stinky," which also doesn't necessarily sound complimentary but it's a term of affection used in our household when our girls were little and were being silly or sassy.

i did the handquilting for two more of the interior blocks on "groovy liberty," bringing the total up to 6/42 complete. i'd like to stitch in the sashing, as well, but haven't decided on a color yet. i think something besides white would work better with the creamy/grey grunge fabric, but i haven't decided what yet.

i bought nothing quilt related nor cleaned anything in my sewing room this week, so that sums up my report. i might have some time to get those "samiches" quilted soon, but i'm also hot on the house design front at the moment and might keep focused there.

some backs in detail

 

this older alexander henry print (circa 2010) of mod flowers in warm, deep pastels is a major fabric crush of mine. once i used it for an apron. scraps of it appeared in the original hst block for my gypsy wife quilt and subsequently in the gypsy child hst quilt. a few years ago when i was going at the hst quilt full throttle, i looked to see if i could find yardage of the print for the backing. i got lucky and found an etsy seller who had used it in her custom-order business for household goods and still had some on hand. it's been patiently waiting on my fabric shelves ever since. getting it out and spreading it down the hall to let the folding wrinkles relax a little before i pressed it made me so happy.

when i'm preparing to use large pieces of yardage, usually for a backing, i tend to spread them out to full length while i'm working my way up to them. this particular weekend i was hoping to back a couple of quilts, so there were several pieces laying about in the afternoon sun as i worked.

although the hst top was the first completed of the grouping, it ended up being the last one i basted together. it was well past midnight by the time i got it done, but i pushed through and saw it to completion. i knew i wouldn't have another chance for a while to do this and had no where to store all the big pieces, so it felt necessary. 

this backing might have taken the longest because i decided to do one of my "large strip down one side and pieces along the other" backing, and had to hunt out and cut several pieces of fabric used in the top for the small side pieces. that took quite a while. the results are worth it, so no regrets. i included several selvages in the pieces and was pleased they showed up so well.

the first quilt i backed of this bunch was "fairytale meadow." after that, i went the easy(ish) route and backed "frosted forest star" because the top was already complete and was sitting on top of the gypsy child, making it more easily accessible. i had a few pieces of yardage i was considering for backing but was still unsatisfied with my picks. that large open-pane white-and-dark green plaid woven was going to be my biggest piece of the backing, but it needed some supporting pieces to round it out. it's not a wideback, so i had to supplement it somehow. the colors in the snowflake fabric went really well with the top except that the background color was a warm, creamy ivory color and this quilt is definitely crisp and cool. it just didn't work. the aqua print matched really well, but there was only half a yard. the ginghams felt woodsy, but the color tones were off. i pulled several more fabrics from stash and finally found the perfect pieces.

this random green from my stash, recently purchased as part of a christmas stashing buy, was just the right color. in that same christmas order i found a pinecone and sprig print that coordinated really well and fit the theme of the quilt. it felt so good to have these finally come together! i decided to do a 3-strip-striped backing, another go-to formation of mine. the strips had to be a lot thicker because of how much space i needed them to take.

because i was piecing the strips to be the length of the back (over 72" long), i decided to flip the outer two fabrics at the seam for a little interest. then i decided to make one more cut and do it again for even more fun in that party-on-the-quilt-back. which i later regretted because it started to feel patchwork-y and this quilt top has a very clean, crisp, modern look to it. ah, well. it's on the back and won't matter much.

why i felt the need to take this crummy night photo of me basting the quilt, i don't know. but there you have it - quilt number two for the night, three for the weekend, is a "samich."

"bright forest" took some more thinking and scheming. fortunately, i picked out two of the fabrics in advance in december while working on the top. the ruby star society bears and trees print was basically perfect for the blocky, modern tree top. the colors were just right, too. i have a fat quarter set of the "flurry" line from 2020 that the print comes from, which is how i knew it was just right for my trees. what was wrong was the perfect fabric was out of print, impossible to find in quantity, and too pricey. but i found just enough of it, bit the bullet and paid the cost, knowing i would supplement with something else when the time came. i found less of the "spark" multi-bright snowflake/star print from the same line, which also coordinated really well, but there was enough of it to work into the backing. 

the trees for the top were made in pairs, but my 7x7 top used only 49 blocks, so i had one extra tree for the back. i included the tree in a strip with the "spark" print, and sandwiched that in between the bear print and the perfectly colored deep teal green small checked print i found in my stash. 

whew! done. and i'm very happy with it. i think this backing levels the whole quilt up a few notches.

this post is all out of order for how i did this batch, but there is one more quilt i backed and basted (the day before these three): fairytale meadow.

the top is composed of orange, green, and low-volume heather ross prints. these were the components i decided to echo on the back. ages ago i knew i wanted the green floral print from the "trixie" line for the backing and got several yards, so i had that covered. for the orange, i had one print in enough yardage to make a strip across the width of the back, so that was an easy decision. same with the strawberry print for the low-volume. this one was probably the easiest to decide on and to put together. i was able to include the fun selvages from two of the prints, which i always like to do.

i think the "trixie" mouse detail is one of my favorites of the bunch. 

it was pretty exhausting to get these quilts processed in two days, and my body hurt for a few days after, too. but i'm so glad it's done.

seester stitching

d1 came over to finally machine attach her binding in preparation for handbinding it. i was helping with babies in the other room when i walked back in to check on her and found d5 seated on the floor next to oldest seester, conversing. my mama heart loved this little scene.

she's mastering that fine balance of keeping the stitch in the right spot while moving the weight of an entire quilt around. it's not easy.
 

i asked d5 if she could finish the two blocks she started the day before. they both needed one more seam to be complete. she agreed to do it while talking to her seester. i told her if she can do one block a day, we'd have all her blocks done within the month. she said, "maybe."

at this point cute little A walked into the room and climbed into her auntie's lap to assist with the pinning of blocks. i love all of my little women of various ages working on projects in my quilt room together! 

wip wednesday 2026.4

the blue "june's meadow" i chose to back "groovy liberty"

i really knocked myself out getting those three tops finished and the four quilts backed & basted last week. since then, i haven't done much quilting at all other than help my girls with some of their projects and a little handquilting while at soccer games.

for my part, i began the handwork for "groovy liberty." i grabbed it as i was running out the door for a game, knowing the white aurifil thread i usually handquilt with was in my little on-the-go sewing case, but with no plan as to how i was going to execute the quilt design just yet. when i got myself and the grandbabies situated in the soccer stands, i pulled the quilt out to assess my design options.

it's a pinwheel quilt, with sashing. there's no obvious continuous pattern i can quilt other than down the center of all the sashing. but i want to quilt in the chambray and liberty parts, so i had to come up with a design for that. i did the somewhat obvious thing by quilting straight down the center of each piece. the only problem was i didn't have any marking tools with me. i decided to eyeball it and did okay, but came up with an even better innovation once i thought about it.

i folded the piece i wanted to quilt in half, creasing it with my fingers, which left a nice mark that was easy to follow, so it worked pretty well. i have 3 of the 42 blocks done now.

i did pull out the quilts for february/valentine's day and add them to the family room quilt baskets - might as well get some extra use out of them now as the holiday is around the corner. the blue and pink quilts and a couple soft, low-volume quilts fit this category.

i got to thinking about when i should wash the quilts in rotation: when i pull them out to freshen them up or when i'm putting them away to clean them before storing? both options make sense and are probably a good idea except i don't want to wash them too often. is twice a year too often for quilts in light use? i don't have any idea how quickly that will age and wear them down. for now, since i can't remember when these quilts were last washed, i went ahead and washed them as i pulled them out before putting them in the baskets.

i cleaned up the blog a little, updating my wip page and the quilt gallery finishes. i added two older quilt finishes to the gallery: "dorothy's girls'', a 2018 finish i somehow never added, and "cheery (easter)", which is still getting some handquilting added every spring break but has already had it's finish photo shoot and is in use. so things are more up to date and tidied in my virtual sewing space as well as in person. i'm working on a few posts about my recent batch experience, too, so you'll get an update on what i got done there.

i'm doing really well at sticking to finishes and haven't even had the desire to buy any fabric. putting away my december purchases and organizing some of the stash shelves cured me of any desire for that! and i haven't even wanted to start anything new, either. i'm still excited about finishes. i'll have another chunk of time to do some more intense work in the next week or so, which will allow me to move projecs further along. for now, i anticipate using that time to quilt the last batch of basted "samiches."

as for house design: i have a floorplan all sketched out i'm quite happy with and have started specifying each room. this involves closely examining how it functions and what it will store so i can make detailed plans to accommodate all the needs. so far, i've got the mudroom squared away.

fairytale meadow

i began this orange and green heather ross log cabin quilt in april 2021, nearly four years ago. i was working with a random pile of fabrics i decided to use together and made a few changes to my plans as i went along. i don't know exactly when i got the 12 blocks all to the state of completion i found them in, but when i pulled them out at the beginning of the year, i was pleasantly surprised to find them all in the same condition. they each had three round of fabrics around the hearth pieces completed: two wider low-volume, one thin orange-and-green. 

i now had to decided if i wanted to add more rounds to the blocks or not, and how to set them together as a quilt top (sashing, cornerstones, etc). i looked over the contents of the project box at all the fabrics collected there, including some already cut strips of more green and orange fabrics.

i'd made no notes for myself as to my original intentions for this top, which frustrated me because it meant i couldn't just get to work and finish the thing. i had to do some thinking, measuring, and planning. as i'm not hugely invested in this quilt (probably giving it to a daughter that's expressed interest), i made some quick decisions to get it to a decent size (the current blocks were a bit too small) and finished.

the decision that took the longest was where to put the unicorns. four of the 12 blocks have unicorns in the centers. i only had half a yard of the fabric to fussy cut the unicorns from, so i didn't do very many. looking at the leftover piece of fabric, there are still two intact unicorns and i wish i'd used them. i don't know what i thought i was saving the fabric for? it's cute, but it's a bright orange i don't use often and this was the perfect place to use a whole unicorn without cutting parts of it off. i should have done it. i thought about unpicking two of the blocks and inserting unicorns so the ratio was 1:1 and placing them in the quilt would be easier for me, but that was too much work.

i have a tendency to take my fabric sudoku a little too seriously - i get rather ocd about it. i want my fabrics spread out evenly and just right according to too many factors. here it was the unicorns. placing four unicorns evenly spaced in a 3 x 4 grid was next to impossible, especially because i was looking at which way they were facing/which unicorn i was using where. for crying out loud! i finally got over my silly personal hangups, just put them in imperfectly placed, and got on with finishing the top.

i added one more skinny round of color to the blocks before joining everything with sashing and cornerstone pieces. i didn't precut the strips to size; i cut them with my scissors after attaching them to the block. this is a little scandalous in the world of precision quilting but it's something i've become comfortable with after watching kate at "the last homely house" do it a lot. i discovered kate last year and have enjoyed putting her youtube videos on for company and listening while i quilt.

something else that kate taught me which is pertinent to this quilt: how to know where to put your next strip when constructing log cabin blocks. i've been really good at losing my place and getting disoriented when constructing blocks. it's a continual problem for me. kate says after you attach the first two rounds, you look for the side that already has three seams on it and that's your next side. i'll do a visual of this next time i make a log cabin quilt. it's a handy tip!

i recently got some new pins as my supply seems to have dwindled. i couldn't find the same ones i bought at joann crafts years ago, so i chose these cute pink stars from bohin and am so happy with them. (i got mine on etsy from a shop that no longer has them in stock, but they are also currently on amazon.) they are even finer than my other pins, which makes them easier to sew over when i feel like it, and they seem to be that much less-bulky by a smidge, which i like.

having soft pink stars sprinkled everywhere is an aesthetic i can appreciate!

 i used them a bunch when pinning all the backings together as i batch basted four quilts over the same weekend. the magnetic wristlet d5 gifted me for christmas a few years ago works nicely with them. i sent her a photo of the pins with the wristlet and she commented that it looked like a little bouquet of stars. yes, it does.

as for the quilt, i sashed it with two more low-volume heather ross prints in the right colors from my stash. i had several options i was considering, but when i thought about the quilt, i decided it was rather fairytale themed already with the unicorns and frogs, so i chose the toadstool print and another floral.

i made a few cutting mistakes, which resulted in some patched-together sashing strips. i was peeved at myself for doing that as i could have had pristine strips with no extra seams in them if i hadn't let myself trip up like that. but it just is now and the little seams won't be so visible as i think they are now once the quilt is in use.

i thought about making the cornerstones pink, a secondary color in several of the prints that would have altered the strong orange and green palette already present, but in the end decided to up the green quotient instead. and now it's done!

thinking about the fairytale vibe, i decided to give the quilt a name other than "heather ross orange and green log cabin quilt" not only for brevity's sake, but because it was too utilitarian. there are frogs and toadstools (semi-magical or could-be magical companions for the unicorns) and lots and lots of florals in this quilt. it seems like a setting for unicorns to rest in - not a forest for hiding in, but a beautiful meadow full of flowers and friends. 

henceforth, it shall be known as "fairytale meadow."

soccer stitches

 

my oldest daughter brought my grandkids to her younger sister's soccer game last week. we're homeschoolers but some of my kids have played for the local high school team. d4 plays club soccer and is currently playing for the high school her oldest sister, d1, played for a decade ago. it's a little weird for me to remember being at this field 10 years ago with d5 running around and belting out an off-key version of "stitches" while her oldest sister played and now here we are with d1 in the stands and her three children, one who is the same age her littlest sister was when she played her.

i'm not a sports fan, but i show up to support my kids periodically. and i always bring handwork with me. my best friend and former college roommate, whose daughter is also on the team, caught a photo of me making faces at the baby during halftime. you can see what i was binding at the time: christmas liberty log cabin. 

having binding clips handy came in useful beyond the quilt when my grandaughter needed to get her hair out of her face and we couldn't find her hair clip anywhere. 

me binding my first quilt with the hair-style clips i used to use

ironically, my very first binding clips, by dritz, resembled those silver barrettes worn when i was a kid. it seems like some mother must have decided they'd help with her quilt binding once apon a time and they were marketed that way for a while.

now the clover clips are what i use as they're more compact, easier to get off with one hand, and hold the binding flat whereas the hair clip-style version curved it. but it turns out you can use clover clips for hair, too, in a pinch. who knew quilt binding and hair-styling had so much in common?

wip wedn 2026.3

 

my design wall has empty space on it! (most recent photo included in this post.) do you know what came off finally? i've been a busy bee, steadily house planning during business hours and sewing in the evenings (which makes for crummy photos, so i haven't bothered taking any). i've moved several ancient wips forward. a weekend of quilting for two days straight gave me four basted quilt "samiches." i'm on a roll for the moment.

here's someone else's wips: d1's 3.5 yr old son and her "puppy park" bricks quilt, started when she was a high school freshman some 13 years ago. wow. she made the quilt as part of an english project, but once she put the needed hours in for the project, she never got around to finishing the quilt. last spring, d5 and i were going to surprise her by binding it for her and we made up the binding, but never got it attached. d1 has been interested in doing it herself, but we can never hit on a time for me to teach her. earlier this month we had a moment when we thought we could do that, but it turns out it wasn't even machine attached to the quilt. so my grandson, r, and i pinned the binding on together while little mother looked on and nursed the baby. she kept saying, "i can't believe i started that quilt as a freshman and now my son is laying on it but it's still not finished." well, we're one small step closer now! r was a wild man with the pins. he flung a few and did not want to just hand me one at a time when i requested them. his mom kept an eye on where they were landing so i could collect them.

looking back over my rentry to blogging last year, i think maybe i post too often. for now, my intention for this year is to post maybe twice a week. i can get very detailed in my recording of the process of quilting, but i think i've overdone that a bit. my goal is to be more concise - keeping my posts shorter and less frequent. i'm going to resurrect "wip wednesday" posts to report weekly on progress and if i have additional items to talk about, will post those on a different day of the week, maybe friday or saturday?

i'll title these "wip wednesday" posts with the year and week, so this post is from the 3rd week of 2026. since this is the first one i've done this year, i'll compile the weeks for my report stats. what have i accomplished so far this year?

the pile from my productive weekend

piecing: i worked on the tops below

completed tops: gypsy child hst, bright forest, fairytale meadow

backed/basted/samiched: gypsy child hst, bright forest, frosted forest star, fairytale meadow log cabin

finishes: farmer oak's flocks, liberty courthouse steps, liberty christmas log cabins

i've also cleaned and purged in my room a lot, organized some fabric shelves that were in sad shape. i don't have an easy way to classify what all i did, so i'll just leave it at that. i cleaned!

long term scrap projects

as i was going over my wips and taking stock of my to-do's, i thought about some projects i've been collecting certain types of scraps for but don't consider active wips because i'm mostly collecting for them rather than working on them. this is why they don't appear on my wip page. in order to fully disclose what i have around to work on (except those fabric pulls with plans not yet cut into), i'm reporting these scrap projects here and adding a page about them to the blog header. 

i love fabric. it's one of the main reasons i quilt. i want to hold onto and make use of every little piece i can. from the beginning i've kept all the tiny pieces hoping to find a use for them. some quilters don't keep anything smaller than 2" or even larger. but i will keep anything at least an inch square. over time, i've found a few projects that make use of the littlest crumbs of fabric and some other regularly discarded cut-offs common to quilting. this page is a look at my longterm scrap projects, those i collect scraps for and will work on over time as the pieces accumulate.

binding triangles

i save all my little triangle cut-offs from my bindings. the idea is to create a scrapbook sort of quilt with them, a scrapbook of my bindings. i plan to add them to corners of charm squares, either one per square or on each corner for a "tiny tiles" look. after nearly 70 quilts complete, i should have enough for a quilt or two by now.

selvages

i cut my selvages with 1/2" to 3/4" of the fabric print included and set them aside to someday make an epic selvage strings quilt. by now i probably have enough for two or more of those quilts. maybe when i get some wips knocked off the list i'll get around to starting some selvage blocks. i love the idea of having these as a record of my fabrics over the years. selvages are often very stylish in their own right these days as designers make them to appeal to people interested in selvage projects. a quilt that showcases these fun bits is very appealing to me.

 

mimi log cabin heart blocks

pattern from jen kingwell's "quilt lovely" book

i first played with this cute little block in may 2015. i was so excited to find something that made use of 1.5" wide scraps. value contrast is key to seeing the pattern: high volume pieces for the heart portion and low volume pieces for the background.

ticker tape

a mosaic- style pattern of small scraps seen at stiched in color by rachel la bour. this is a pattern i found early on for use of small pieces. since it looks a little labor-intensive (as any tiny piecing will be, actually), i think i might have options i like more now to use these for. i'll keep it in mind if i get tired of some of the other projects.

"birch"

scrap pattern by crazy mom quilts

uses small scrap pieces

i think i'd go for a more neutral background that what amanda used, but i do like the simplicity of this pattern.

it has always seemed to me a good idea to know where the pieces will go and have a project in mind for what i'm saving. having them recorded just might help me move them into the active stage.