Chart 33: Border Quilt Pattern and May, Block #61 in the Farmer's Wife Sew Along

Jewel was the first non-template friendly block where we recommended that you just cut fabric out, use the paper patterns and sew like you would if you were sewing a garment. That was block #46 and From Marti Michell Chart 15. Then we hypothesized that if your sewing experience includes making garments, you will immediately understand that cutting mirror-image pieces with the fabric folded wrong sides together is like cutting vest or shirt fronts.

Another IF — If your sewing experience includes making garments, the chances are around 90% that you have bought and ultimately saved commercial garment patterns. That brings up the question of what to do with those patterns now!

So, Another Diversion

Even though there is no expiration date on dress patterns, we thought it would be fun to share some ways to repurpose dress patterns each time we just cut and sew a Farmer’s Wife block with a paper pattern. With Jewel we made accordion pleated tissue flowers.

A few weeks later with Priscilla, block #86 and From Marti Michell Chart 23, we just used the dress tissue like tissue paper in gift bags! How appropriate for a gift from a sewer!

I mentioned in Jewel’s post that I had tried tracing a quilting design on an old dress pattern, pinning that to a quilt and machine quilting right through the tissue. I only tried it once and didn’t love it enough to do it a second time, but I am committed to trying it again someday.

Repurposed Dress Pattern #3

In the meantime, I LOVE the way I repurposed a dress pattern to guide my quilting on a border. I created a quilting line without marking and there was no marking to remove after quilting!! Since I did not sew through the tissue, but only beside the edge of it, the tissue was re-usable and best of all, there was no tearing away with little pieces of paper to pull out.

A Simple Border Quilting Pattern

I needed to quilt a border and a modest quilting was all that was needed. The border is 5-1/2 inches wide. Starting with a 27 inch long shirt pattern, I cut 4 strips of tissue 5 inches wide and 27 inches long and taped them together to make a strip as long as the quilt. I actually used Marti’s Choice Fusible Tape to join the tissue because I was at the ironing board ironing the wrinkles out of the tissue and the Fusible tape was handy.

Then I folded it in half and traced five 4-1/2 x 9 inch Flying Geese triangles (FMM product #8022) the length of the tissue to create a sawtooth edge. It was easy to cut with scissors.

Then I smoothed out the quilt on my work table and pinned the tissue pattern in place along the border.

 Now you can see it at the machine ready to sew along the edge of the tissue.

At the point of the sawtooth edge you stop with your needle down and turn the quilt border 90° and continue stitching to the interior corner of the border. Stop with the needle down and rotate the quilt again.

When you reach the end, stop. Unpin the paper and go to the next side. As it turned out I could use the same tissue on all 4 sides. I used all 10 triangles on the long sides and only 8 along the top and bottom.

I think I am satisfied with the one saw tooth row of quilting. At least I am going to complete the binding before I make a final decision.

Original border as quilted:



This line drawing represents a variation repeating the same border offset by ½ triangle. Even though the tissue has been pinned and unpinned 4 times, I think I could make it all the way around the quilt again. The square on point or diamond that this creates could be filled with more quilting, if desired.



On a wider border, you could create an echo by moving the sawtooth border a few inches closer to the edge of the quilt.



You could use the same idea with other shapes like a half circle.



You could also do the same thing with a freezer paper border pattern or painters tape, but that won’t give you the warm feeling you get from repurposing or recycling something you really should have thrown out 10 or 15 years ago. What? Longer?

My May Block

Click on the image for a larger view.  Click the link to download the Template Conversion Chart for May:

From Marti Michell Template Conversion Chart #33

For May, Block #61 in the Farmer's Wife 1930s Sew-along
 

In addition to our template conversion PDF download, you will want to read Gnome Angel's tutorials for these blocks.