Mi Casa y Su Casa: Technique Tuesday with Debby Kratovil

My House and Your House!

Dwellings Collection - medium sized flowers (Baby Bloom)

What can we do with this collection of 29 different Dwellings prints from Contempo? It's almost too much, like eating the entire Thanksgiving dinner with all the dessert - by yourself! Let's see what Debby Kratovil of Debby Kratovil Quilts narrowed it down to in this week's Technique Tuesday. We sent her half-yard cuts of every single piece . . . the rest was up to her.

What did you do first when you got such a large package?
After I groaned due to visual overload <smile>, I separated the fabrics into matching prints, fanning them out to show the various color families. Wow - wanna see what I found?

Don't you love these colored brush strokes in 11 different flavors? Print is called "Confetti"

Absolutely LOVE these "log cabin" geometrics - Baby Box Trot

Two types of stripes. Can you believe stripes with those ovals - Beaded Stripe?

Very large scale rendition of Baby Bloom - Bloom!

And I saved the best for last:

5 different "log cabin" prints about 8-1/2" for each motif - Box Trot

You obviously had to start cutting somewhere. What ideas were spinning inside your head?
I fell back on one of my "go to" patterns that would combine a geometric (ie, stripe) with a floral and use a 90 degree ruler to cut wedges. I call this "Yikes! Those Stripes!"

Two 3-1/2" strips with good contrast

Method:
1. Cut two 3-1/2" x wof strips of two fabrics (a stripe and a floral). Note that I offset them in order to save fabric. I used an Omnigrid 98L ruler (generally used to cut side setting triangles for setting blocks on point). I ignored the numbers; just used it to cut my stripset, which measures 6-1/2" high as shown.

Flip-flop the ruler to cut as shown

2. Continue cutting as shown in the picture above.

Place the units, cut from the SAME strip set

3. When these pieced triangles are cut, the straight of grain runs along the long edge. This means that your block will have NO BIAS EDGES as in other techniques. Your block will finish to a square without wobbles!

Yikes! Block sewn and pressed

4. I cut pieced triangles from various pairings and got the following quilt center. This is what I would call a "low contrast" quilt - hard to see where one color/fabric begins and the others end.

Remember those large log cabin prints? I used them for a vertical center

5. I made 6 of my Yikes! blocks. As I was using only 1/2 yard cuts of fabric, I had to get creative with finishing the quilt. I used a strip of the large log cabin print as a vertical center. I put in some vertical sashing to separate them. Two different prints for the borders - because that's all I had, that's why!

Debby, did you make anything else?
Well, of course! There was a lot of fabric that I hadn't even played with yet. I thought of some quick and simple hot pads, letting the fabric do all the work.

Single piece fabric hot pads

I like your binding - again a stripe. And your quilting is simple and clean. Can we see the back?
Here you go:

Here is that fantastic smaller log cabin print for the backs

So, you're really done now, right?
Not so fast. I still had things running around in my head. I thought "log cabin" and that goes with Dwellings. How about a log cabin dwelling? I'll show you my steps, but it really isn't a pattern because each of those Box Trot panels isn't the same size:

The large Box Trot panel prints - cut out various units

Cut a 4-1/2" strip, recut into triangles for the roof

Added sky next to the roof and then trimmed. Yes, I lopped off the points!

A completed block that didn't have the points lopped off!

I only was able to make 5 blocks with matching roofs. How can I make this a balanced center?

Added green Confetti fabric to either side of the center house block

I was able to finish this quickly with machine quilting with a walking foot. I absolutely love this little quilt and it is already hanging in my kitchen. It makes me smile every time I see it.

Thanks Debby, for providing so much creative inspiration using the Dwellings collection! 

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