Crafts and Math: Covid Quilt Challenge #10: Non-Rectangular

This past weekend was another covid quilt challenge (I got a little behind on my posting). The "technique" we drew this week was "non-rectangular". We decided that this was a little too vague of a challenge, especially since I had a few other things going on on the weekend. We added the theme of fall to our non-rectangular challenge.

This was an interesting one, especially before we added the theme, because it's not really one that you could google, the way we often start our challenge. Even with the added theme, it wasn't super googleable. We found you had to just look for ideas that might then lend themselves to being "non-rectangular". The other interesting thing was how does one define "non-rectangular". Where did a diamond fall? Was a rectangular shape that just had wavy edges enough? What about three straight edges and one with something that poked out? If so, how much of the edge would need to not be straight to count. We decided that it just couldn't be something with four straight lines and four 90 degree angles. In the end, I tried to go farther than that, just so there wasn't any question about whether it was too close or not.

I struggled with the idea of "non-rectangular" mostly because every time I went to sketch something I would start with drawing a rectangle. I was thinking about doing a tree with confetti leaves, but decided I didn't have time for that in the weekend, and I wasn't convinced I could nicely make something that wasn't rectangular. Instead I started thinking about doing a large, single leaf, and added on more to the rectangle I had started sketching, and ended up being excited about the idea of an L-shaped piece with a couple bits sticking out the edges as well. I sketched out a leaf I liked, and after some googling, I settled on adding an acorn that hung off as well. I tried to think of a third thing for my third square, but decided to leave it blank.

I knew I wanted my two covered squares to have an outer fabric and an inner fabric, but I struggled with what to do with the blank square because it felt like that wouldn't be enough (I didn't want it to be too plain) but the initial things I thought of were going to make it too busy and draw the eye away from the other bits. I the end I decided to do a split half-square triangle with a few different fabrics. This was really because of how I decided I wanted to quilt it and I knew having a strong diagonal line would be good. That also meant that I wanted to mitre the corners in the other blocks, to keep with the diagonal lines.

There were a few extra challenging things about this project. One was the size. In order to have an abnormal shape and stay within the perimeter range (20-30 inches), the blocks were quite small (3" finished). This meant the mitred bits were also quite small. The other challenge was figuring out how to finish a quilt that wasn't a "normal" shape. I toyed around with a few ideas (including adding binding that went behind the sticking out bits, but in the end I scraped that and did a bit of a raw-edge finish. I'm still curious about what other quilters do — it wasn't something I seemed to have the right words to google.

I decided to reverse appliqué the leaf — both because I thought it would look better and to try something new. It was an odd enough shape that I chose to iron freezer paper on the back, cut a line in the middle, and then glue down the fabric that I turned under. Technically I have used this technique on a previous project and I used rubber cement for it, but it had been long enough since I did that that my rubber cement had gone rubbery, so instead I used a glue stick and it was messier and not as precise as I would have preferred, but it got the job done.

I chose to do straight line quilting that rotated at the dividing diagonal. I purposefully spaced the lines different distances, but on a piece this small it was hard to get enough quilting to look good, while still having things look randomly spaced and not part of a pattern (since some of the different distances aren't that distinguishable). I did not account for how much the acorn would stick out the side, so I should have carried some of the quilting further along — it ends early on the backside.

I laid the leaf and the acorn out where I thought I wanted them, which wasn't quite where I had sketched them, but they looked better this way than when I laid them out to match the sketch. Next, I stitched them down on top of the background. I ended up turning under the background on the top (I had originally cut it to have binding added to it), but I left the backing cut as a raw edge. Once I had cut out the shape, I overcast around the entire edge of the quilt to finish it. I still think I might have liked a different finishing method, but I still haven't figured out what that is.

My friend ended up going a completely different route. She made her the shape of her object. She also did A LOT of handwork on this one. She decided to do a pickup truck that was hauling pumpkins. She made a paper outline model of what she wanted, and auditioned her fabric for it.

Next, she started making her pumpkins. At first she pieced them.

But she wasn't happy with how they came together, so she ended up rethinking things and realizing she was going to have to do things by hand to get the look she wanted. Pumpkins got made and attached.