When I left her last she measured 36.5" square and was looking cute for a baby quilt or wallhanging. However I knew that I wanted to go bigger. How much bigger? Even I don't know yet. Remember this is the quilt I have not planned in any shape or form other than being a medallion. But, as a start I felt this border needed to be bigger than the previous ones, so I opted to go 6" wide (finished measurement) this time.
Again the maths would allow for a number of different options if you were working to these measurements but perhaps don't want to use the blocks I've chosen. For example, working 28 6" (finished) blocks would work perfectly here.
However, I chose to work up some paper pieced tippecanoe blocks and intersperse them with simple bordered rectangles and I am so pleased that it turned out just the way I imagined it in my head!
If you'd like to know,
Here's what I did
Border 4 - bringing unfinished size up to 48.5" square
Make 16 paper pieced 6" (finished) tippecanoe blocks
Make 16 bordered rectangle blocks (block will measure 4.5" x 6.5" unfinished)
For the tippecanoe blocks:
Make 16: I searched online for a tippecanoe paper piecing template that would give me a 6" block, but I couldn't find one, so I had to draw my own. It wasn't as bad as it sounds though because I found that papersnake.com has a free downloadable quarter inch grid paper. This made drafting the quadrants of the tippecanoe very simple, but if you give it a go, just check that the paper prints to exactly quarter inch grids before steaming ahead and stitching up blocks. Pic below shows how to draw the quadrant with a quarter inch seam allowance if you feel like having a go:
Draw a square 12 x 12 squares on the paper. This is your 3" block (check the measurement, don't proceed if it's not 3"). The little triangle area marked 1 on the photo is marked across the corner 6 squares along on each of the two adjacent sides. Drawing lines from these points of the triangle down to the bottom corner of the whole square will give you the sections for 3 and 4 also. Finally, draw a border of 1 square width all the way around your 3" square and this will give you a quarter inch seam allowance all the way round. Your entire drawing should now measure 3.5" square. Hope that made sense.
If you squeeze 4 quadrant patterns on to one page of the papersnake quarter inch grid paper you will be able to photocopy it 16 times to yield the template for your 16 blocks. To do this you need to draw all the way to the edge of the printed grids as you can see above. The bottom drawings fit within the gridded paper except for the bottom quarter inch seam, but that's easy enough to draw on manually measuring with a ruler. Getting four on one page really helps with the photocopying. I would happily send you a pdf of my template page if you are interested, but I have noted that when I reprint the pdf the sizing seems to reduce so that's not much help. It needs to be exact to work. Any techie individual know why scanning the template would reduce its sizing like this?
For the bordered rectangles:
Cut 16: 2" x 2.5" rectangles for centres
Cut 32: 2" x 2.5" rectangles for borders
Cut 32: 2" x 6.5" rectangles for borders
Position a tippecanoe block at each corner and alternate 4 bordered rectangle blocks with a further three tippecanoes along each side.
So, now that border 4 is all stitched up I really will have to get my thinking cap on for what comes next.
Don't forget all the "how to's" for this medallion quilt can be found at the top of my blog on the Mystery Medallion Quilt tab.
