I got up this morning a started piecing a new quilt called “Buffalo Ridge.” This quilt is completely from stash so it will count toward my mile challenge. Every month a group of friends meets at my house for sewing (and laughs). This group started about 8 years ago as the International Mystery group at the Patchwork Sampler shop and we’ve just continued meeting. For the past couple of years we’ve selected a book of stash busting quilts to try to use up some stash. This year the book is All-Time Favorite Scrap Quilts.
It’s a compilation of quilts from various That Patchwork Place books. It has a lot of great quilts in it. I wish I’d been able to keep up with the monthly quilts but unfortunately I’ve fallen behind. Anyway, this month I’m starting to piece Buffalo Ridge. The first part of the quilt is pretty putzy but once I have these units finished, the rest should go pretty fast (except for the pieced border). This quilt was initially in a Nickel Quilt book by Pat Speth.
This doesn’t look like it will use much stash when you consider this little box of “parts” will make a full-size quilt. Ha ha!
The first units I need to piece requires sewing half square triangles onto squares. It became evident very quickly that it would be much easier to piece these if I trimmed the “dog ears” off the triangles BEFORE sewing them to the squares. It’s much easier to match and align the pieces and there’s no need to trim after piecing. If you haven’t used a point trimmer before, here’s a couple of photos to demo the process. I use the Judy Martin trimmer but I also have the set of Fons and Porter trimmers. I just think it’s easier to see what I’m trimming using the clear tool.
To use this just line up the lines of the triangle on the tool with the fabric triangles (left) and cut with a rotary cutter. You’re just trimming off the tip (center). Then you can easily align the blunt top with the top of the square and sew (right)! No dog ear to trim later!!
Here are the units I’m piecing. I need 80 for the quilt I’m making and I’ve finished 24. It’s kind of slow going but I’ll get there.
