Hidden Agenda Quilts-Secret Codes

    Today I am finishing up a quilt I created that I am calling "Hidden Agenda". I will show it to you later in this post. But first, I want to talk about how quilts have been used in the past and perhaps even today to send secret messages. I find it very interesting and clever that one would take a perfectly innocent object such as a quilt to pass on a message. For instance, the Underground Railroad Quilts. There is folklore that certain quilt blocks were used to convey messages and maps to help the enslaved escape. For example the Log Cabin was supposedly used to convey where safe houses were along the journey. I like to believe this is true. 

   I have always been drawn to fabric with writing, fonts, words, scribble etc. I love to look at other peoples drawings and doodles on paper and journals. What does it mean? I can't help myself, I even like to pick up people's grocery lists left behind in baskets at grocery stores and I have used them in my art. I'm weird like that. 

   I had quite a bit of scraps of fabric with writing to use for part of the sashing on this circle pattern quilt. I wanted to get outside of my usual color pallet on this one so I asked a good friend, Theresa to help me choose my colors. I am so pleased with the outcomes. I never would have picked some of these colors. If you are trying to get out of your usual patterns, colors etc. I encourage you to ask a friend to help you pick out your next fabrics for your project. 

 

Improving My Diamonds in Rectangles

 

Still working on my Tropical Storm quilt that I shared about in my last post. Like I mentioned before, I really struggled with the diamond in the rectangle blocks.  I'm going to share some tips I have picked up from friends and Youtube tutorials:

1. The Deb Tucker's Diamond in Rects ruler will save your life! You get precision cut diamonds and the side triangles are oversized on purpose so you can trim that down at the end. It is so much easier than the tiny little templates that I printed out from EQ8. You just look on the ruler for the size you need and follow the instructions. I'm a little directionally challenged so it took me a few minutes and Deb Tucker's Youtube video tutorial to figure it out.
2. Lay out the corners on top of the diamond before you sew. It is so easy to get mixed up and sew the sides on wrong. 
3. Sew with the diamond on top so you can see placement better.
4. Place the top points of diamond just a tad from top of side. Don't try to equalize the amount of overage on each end. Deb Tucker talks about this in her video. But here is a photo of what I mean, can you see my little black arrow at top and end?
   
   
   
5. I have found that a little less than 1/4" on the seams is better to give you more edge. 
6. Sew opposite ends first then the other two. Press seams toward edge of diamond.

I was determined to have more precision in the cutting out of all the pieces. I have been cutting out all of the square in square pieces with my Cricut maker. It takes a long time but I feel the results will be so much better since I can't seem to cut out the proper sizes on my own. LOL  As you can see, I have my shop assistant, Bentley helping me. 

Fun Using EQ8

 Electric Quilt 8 Fun

I have been hearing about EQ8 for a while now and finally decided I needed to have this quilt making software. I purchased it and downloaded directly from the EQ8 Website a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I have been playing around and learning how to use it. I have found several really helpful tutorials on Youtube and the EQ8 online site. I am quite comfortable with different design software so this really helped speed the learning curve along. However, I did have some trouble understanding the mathematics of building a quilt. In my mind, if I told the software I wanted my block to be 12 inches when I completed piecing the block, it should be 12 inches right? Nope, the software considers the seam allowance. So my blocks came out to 12.5 inches because I had entered 1/4 inch seam allowance. It was a little confusing until I learned a "finished block" is the size of the block after piecing it. 

Also designing a quilt and actually constructing it are two different animals. I could design quilts all day long. But, being fairly new to quilting, piecing these fantastic designs has been challenging. Of course, not knowing what I don't know, I picked some hard to piece type blocks for my first quilt. Let me just go into the first quilt I designed in EQ8. I'm calling this one "Little Storm". First, I will show you the photo of the design from the software-not the actual quilt I made. I did not color in the boarders.

The sides and corner pieces were easy peasy. The dang Storm at Sea blocks about killed me! LOL. I had never pieced the diamond in the rectangle before. I first tried to do them using the templates from the EQ8. The rotary cutting of these tiny corner pieces was brutal. I struggled with the piecing and even with some tutoring from a dear friend, I still had great difficulty. I did get some validation that this was a hard block by several quilters who I shared my frustrations with. When I said "storm at sea block", I got that "OH" look. Anyway, someone suggested I get the Deb Tucker Diamond Rectangle ruler. So I purchased that and it helped so much. She purposely designed the ruler/template so the pieces are bigger and can be trimmed to correct size later. But, I had already completed a couple of the blocks in my wonky fashion and I was unwilling to make those over. So in piecing the wonky ones with the better ones, it still came out not show worthy by any means.

But, I still love it and I am currently working on my Storm at Sea Redemption quilt. I'm calling this one "Tropical Storm". I have purchased the fabric and am currently in process of cutting out all of the pieces. I am focusing on precision cutting using my Cricut Maker for a lot of the blocks and the Deb Tucker ruler for the diamonds in rectangles. I will keep you posted on the progress.