Peg Spradlin is responsible for making many of the quilts you see in QM’s pages. Peg has sewn for us and our sister publications for many years. She’s a master.
Peg Spradlin
Peg was responsible for making Quiltmaker’s Garden, an anniversary quilt we designed with elements from our patterns over the past 30 years. Peg shares some thoughts on bias edges below.
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I have a real prejudice against bias edges, especially when two bias edges come together to form a seam, as they do with patches C/C and D/D in Part 5 of Quiltmaker’s Garden in the Nov/Dec issue of Quiltmaker.
Quiltmaker's Garden is a series quilt appearing in 2012 issues March/April through Nov/Dec. Made by Peg Spradlin.
The following steps illustrate how I dealt with the bias edges for the C and D patches which form the gazebo’s roofline.
I always heavily starch any fabrics that I know are going to be cut on the bias. This helps keep the edges from stretching when they are joined into a seam.
Referring to Part 5 and the C/D patch cutting diagram on page 65 in Nov/Dec, cut the heavily starched light blue tone-on-tone and medium tan tone-on-tone fabrics into strips 4 1/2″ wide by the length needed (80″ in this case). Sew these strips together along the 80″ length using a 1/4″ seam allowance.
Make a 4″ x 8″ template from transparent plastic and mark a diagonal line from corner to corner as shown below.
4" x 8" template
Lay the marked diagonal line of the template along the seam line of the pieced strips of fabric as shown below.
Place template on fabric
Trace around the outside of the template.
Trace around the template
Add a 1/4″ seam allowance and then cut out the patch.
Add a 1/4" seam allowance
Repeat to cut out 8 rectangles total: 4 C/C and 4 D/D, as shown below.
Cut out 8 rectangles
This method doesn’t eliminate the bias edges altogether, but the bias edges that remain are paired with and sewn to a straight edge, thus minimizing the stretch.
