Tag Archives: Jason Yenter

In the Beginning Dragon Quilt – 4

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I’ve been showing you my progress on the In the Beginning Dragon quilt kit – here’s my first post and my second – and today, it’s border time. The kit comes with a dragon border print, which has four rows of the border printed lengthwise. After pre-washing, the repeat lengthwise is just under 24″, with dragon circles alternating with dragon profiles in flames. Widthwise, the repeat is 9 7/8″. The instructions say to cut borders 9.5″ wide, but I wanted the maximum ability to play with positioning at the corners. Cutting four lengthwise strips 9 7/8″ wide will leave 3/4″ of black, at one selvedge or the other. Hmm.

Here’s the orange quilt illustration from the kit:In the Beginning Dragon quilt pattern in orangeThe instructions say to center a dragon circle on the width of the quilt and a dragon in flames on the lengthwise edges. The quilter who made this orange quilt did that, which is why we’re looking at this image this week. (The one who made the blue quilt didn’t.) The corners are mitered, and you can see that with this positioning, you get mirrored corners which is all good, but they each have a slice of dragon circle in them. I don’t love that, so I wanted to explore alternatives.

That extra 3/4″ of black in the border fabric can be either on the outer edge of the border or the inner edge, depending which selvedge you choose to start cutting. It looked to me like this quilter cut pretty close to that Celtic braid, moving the extra black to the outer edge. I cut the other way around, trimming the white from the selvedge closest to the braid, then cutting my 9 7/8″ strips from there.

I tried many options: dragon circle centered on both the length and width, dragon in flames centered on both the length and width, dragon circle centered on the length and dragon flame on the width, then vice versa. I moved the Celtic braid closer to the edge of the quilt, too. None of the results make my little matchy-matchy heart go pit-a-pat.

Then I had an idea: fussy cutting. Here is a bias cut corner, a square with its sides the same width as the border, with a dragon circle centered in it. It’s cropped at the top because that’s diamonds cut out of rectangles.

It’s less than ideal that it’s on the bias, but look at the corner I got with it:Dragon Quilt Corner pieced by Deborah Cooke

Oooooo! I like that! No mitering either. There are always compromises in matching up a detailed border like this one, but this compromise pleases me. The circle around the dragon is almost whole, and the inside of the Celtic braid lines up. This also means that my quilt is slightly octagonal, but I like that, too. I could have patched the corner with some of the leftover solid black fabric, but it’s darker than the background on the border print. I thought it would show.

I cut two each of the borders shown above. I laid out the side borders to have the dragon in flames centered on the long edge and centered a circled dragon on the shorter edges. I couldn’t quite alternate circled dragons around the perimeter as there are six on the long edges and five on the short ones, but I alternated which dragon was in the corner. In two corners, I have the dragon with the spread wings between one the same on the left, and the dragon that’s more in profile on the right. On the other two corners, the profiled dragon is between two dragons with spread wings.

Voilà! Here’s my finished quilt top:In the Beginning Dragon Quilt Kit pieced by Deborah Cooke

It’s huge! Mr. Math used a ladder to take the picture and the edges are still cropped.

Initially, I was disappointed that I hadn’t ordered fabric for the back of the dragon and circles print, but I found a textured black print in the discount bin at Fabricland. It was $5/m and 54″ wide, so that was an economical solution. I’ll put a strip of the emblems along the seams—there’s some left from cutting those six dragon panels apart, as it was between them—and a dragon in flames where the strips meet, just for fun. It definitely needs to be bound with a color. I’m going to find out about the long arm machine quilting done at a local shop and maybe have this one quilted that way.

And the bonus? The leftover fabric makes really cool masks.

In the Beginning Dragon Quilt – 3

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In the Beginning Dragon Quilt in blueMore dragon quilt!

Last week, I was piecing the six blocks with the scales in this design—the ones that are stacked on either side of the central panel—and getting the scales oriented the right way. As mentioned then, I took apart my second pieced strip—the one with two strips of scale fabric with a strip of black sandwiched in the middle—and sliced it into squares. I then sewed the squares together with the scales the right way to make the units for the top and bottom of each of these blocks.

Here’s one of my finished blocks:In the Beginning Dragon quilt pieced by Deborah Cooke

All the scales are aligned!

The print called Flames is the one in the corners of this block. The instructions say to cut two 3.5″ widthwise strips out of the fabric, then cut each one into 12 squares. Because I pre-washed my fabric, I only got 11 out of the width, but there was plenty of fabric left to cut the remaining two. This print is also a one-way design: it doesn’t matter which way you think is “up” but it looks better to have the blocks all oriented the same way IMO. I sewed a couple “upside down”, so my stitch ripper got another workout, just because I wasn’t paying attention. After these blocks were done, I pieced them into vertical rectangles by adding a bit of black sashing.

Next, I pieced the dragon squares into horizontal rectangles with those rectangles of the dragon print. (I did play around with the placement of these, then ended up using the same arrangement as the illustration.) When I had the two horizontal panels on the floor, I realized what a nice quilt you could make with just these blocks. Look:In the Beginning Dragon quilt panels pieced by Deborah CookeI put some of the leftover fabric between the rows—it ran out at the left, because these bands are 58″ or so wide—and put a little bit of the flames at the right. I like it better with the background all the same colour, but even one panel of these six-dragon-panels would make a fun quilt.

Next I cut the two rows of Emblems that go between the dragon blocks and the central section. I wanted to have the round medallions centered in both horizontal strips. I cut for the image not the grain. There’s extra fabric included for matching, but the design was printed slightly off-grain (as grid patterns often are). This is where the shrinkage from pre-washing almost got me. I needed more than three widthwise strips to get enough repeats, and managed to get another half width. Phew! It was just enough.

Here’s the top at this point:In the Beginning Dragon quilt panels pieced by Deborah Cooke

The sun was bright, so it’s a bit washed-out—and even with a step ladder, we didn’t get the whole thing!

I’m pleased to see that the joins in the Emblems bands are invisible. I matched the pattern between the circles as I thought it would be less obvious. You can see the print through the back of the fabric, though, so it was pretty easy to match.

Finally, the borders. The border print runs lengthwise on the fabric and there are four repeats across the width. The kit includes plenty, but I wanted prettier corners than shown in the illustrated quilts. This is going to be tough. The border print has a 23.75″ repeat after washing, which doesn’t divide neatly into anything. You already know I have matchy-matchy disease and this border print is going to make me work for it.

In the Beginning Dragon Quilt – 2

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In the Beginning Dragon Quilt in blueI told you a while ago about ordering this quilt kit and (yay!) it finally arrived. Despite all the other things in progress on my worktable, I immediately dove in because, well, dragons.

I was worried that the fabric might feel too much like ink, but it’s quite nice. It’s very smooth and seems a bit lighter than other quilting cotton. The instructions say not to pre-wash the fabric, as it might shrink and the panels might be too small to cut to size. The issue for me is that the fabric wouldn’t be able to be washed ever if I did that. I like to pre-wash so the worst case scenario has already happened before I sew, so into the washing machine it went.

It shrank, of course, as it’s 100% cotton. I like the feel of the fabric much better – it’s a bit thicker now and not as smooth. The unexpected thing was that it shrank in the width and not so much in the length. I measured those six square dragon panels before washing. They have a 1/4″ black border around each image and were 12 1/8″ square at the inside of the black border. After washing, they were 11 1/8″ wide and 11 3/4″ tall. The instructions are to cut them 12.5″ square with .25″ going in the seam allowance, so, exactly as warned, I couldn’t cut them to size.

I’d expected this and had two contingency plans.

The second contingency plan was the tougher one: that I’d make the entire quilt slightly smaller overall and have to recalculate everything. (Gah.) Fortunately, the first contingency plan worked. I checked the black fabric and there’s a lot in the kit, mostly because they included some for the quilt binding. They instruct you to cut the binding on grain, though, which I won’t do – I always cut binding on the bias – so those 9 X 2.5″ crosswise strips of black are now extra fabric. (Actually, that’s 22.5″ by 43″ or so, maybe more if the kit is generous, so it might be enough to cut binding on the bias. We’ll see.)

Each of the six dragons are bordered in black: the instructions call for 1.5″ strips of black for those borders, and the squares end up being 14.5″ square. Once they’re sewn in, they’ll have a 1″ black border. I cut my shrunk dragon panels so that the black border was the seam allowance on the width and made them square. Then I cut my black strips 2″ wide. After sewing on the black borders, I trimmed them up to be 14.5″ square. A teeny bit of the dragon image in the height was lost – less than .25″ – and the black borders are a little bit wider than specified – mine will be about 1 3/8″ wide once the blocks are sewn in – but my finished measurements are all good. (It doesn’t look square in this image because I had the camera at an angle. 🙂 It IS square!)Dragon quilt block sewn by Deborah Cooke

There is a lot of extra fabric around the image in the central panel. Mine just has a little more background than the one in the picture. I’m good with that.

Detail of In the Beginning Dragon QuiltWhen I started to piece the other blocks, things got interesting. The scale print is a one-way design: the scales are shaded at one end and not at the other. It seems to me that I’d want them all to be in the same direction. To my relief, the person who made the sample quilt thought the same thing, because they are aligned that way. At right is a close-up of the side panel from the image on the kit: you can see that the scales are all aligned. I apologize that it’s not really crisp but I wanted it big enough that you could see the scales.

If you follow the instructions, this isn’t the result you’ll get. That’s because of the one-way design. Let’s look at that. There’s a little unit of three squares created by cutting crosswise strips of black and the scale fabric. You sew them together, then cut the blocks from them, like this:Dragon quilt sewn by Deborah Cooke

You join them to an outside rectangle of black then put them around the central square in the block. But look what happens when you change their orientation by placing them around the square:Dragon quilt sewn by Deborah Cooke

The implication of the one-way design strikes! Cutting the strips as instructed will only create the units to be placed vertically, if you care about the scales being oriented the same way. I do, so I’ll take apart the other pieced strip (there are two), cut the strips into squares, and piece them individually with the scales aligned the way I want them for the horizontal blocks.

It also means that I need to divide my units into groups, to make sure the black rectangle is sewn on the outside edge. I’ve split this first group of twelve with vertical scales into two groups: I’ll put the black rectangle on the left side of six of them, and on the right side of the other six. Dragon quilt sewn by Deborah CookeSimilarly, when I piece the units for the horizontal scales, I’ll put the black rectangle on the top of six of them and on the bottom of the other six. That got a bit more complicated, didn’t it?

This also means (hmm…) that I won’t be able to rotate the blocks when I arrange them for the quilt. Their orientation will be set, because of the scales. Prints often repeat across the width of the fabric as well as down the length, so I laid out the six central blocks to check:Dragon quilt sewn by Deborah CookeI’m thinking I might notice the similarities, particularly between the two on the left and also on the two in the middle. Those light-coloured dragons draw my eye! I rotated the blocks before sewing on the pieces with the scales:Dragon quilt sewn by Deborah CookeThe similarities are less obvious this way. Now, I’m ready to piece those six blocks!

What about the quilt in the picture provided with the kit? Either the person who pieced it didn’t follow the instructions and did as I did, or it might be a computer-generated image. That’s interesting, and it means I’ll be keeping my eyes open for other tweaks as I work.

This quilt is a lot of fun! I can’t seem to leave it alone, so I’ll show you more next week.