Triangle Quilt — A Few Rows

Today I finally got around to sewing a few rows together on the triangle quilt. I apologize for the quality of the photos — I tried to use the panorama feature on my iPhone, but it doesn’t work that well for something that’s lying on the floor.

My idea for the design wall was a complete bust.  There are about 5,500 little pieces in this quilt, and I quickly realized I was never going to have the patience to arrange them all before I began sewing.  What I finally ended up doing was sewing pairs of triangles together with one dark and one medium/light, trying to select two pieces that I thought looked good together. Once I have a bunch of these sewn in the four main dark colors (brown, black, blue and red), I start sewing 35 pairs together to make a row.  During this step I make an effort to include a selection of all four colors, and also try to mix up the light/medium triangles a little.  Basically, it’s all pretty random and, amazingly, I’m not stressing about placement.

The rows have been tricky to sew together, since many of the triangles are not cut on the correct grain.  The points are not perfect, but it has a sort of primitive look to it that I really like.  My son gave me a DeLonghi Pro 300 Ironing System for Christmas, and it has really helped to tame these triangles.

Most of the brown and madder prints are reproductions given to me by generous friends (thank you Meredith and Mickie).  Half of the yellow prints are also repros, while all the rest of the pieces are antique fabrics from my collection of old blocks and tops (some given to me by my friend, Patty).

Right now the top is 12″ x 85″ — I have a lot left to do.