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Stitching up a Single Girl Quilt

Rossie's Single Girl Quilt6

Did you see that Denyse Schmidt is releasing a version of her single girl quilt pattern that include improv piecing? It’s called the Freewheeling Single Girl and you can pre-order it on her website.

I’m on the staff of Sewtopia (a retreat for sewing and quilting) this year and I’m going to be Denyse’s assistant at the April event in Atlanta. Due to this awesome opportunity, I had the Freewheeling Single Girl pattern a few weeks early and I took it with me on a my guild’s winter retreat.

Funny story, I own the original version of this pattern and had long ago pulled out a fabric stack to make the quilt.

Fabric pull from 2009.

 

When I knew the new pattern was on its way, I pulled out my old fabric stack and played with it a bit. I went through my stash and scraps and made some additions and subtractions to the prints for the rings. In addition, I purchased some solid yardage for the background: Gold from Michael Miller Cotton Couture. The background color had always been gold in my head, and I had purchased a gold bedsheet a while back to cut up for yardage, but I was concerned that the thread count was a bit low. The background contains a lot of curves that are cut through the bias, so I wanted a nice tight fabric.

Screen Shot 2016-01-29 at 2.32.59 PM

The little bin that contained my old fabric pull also contained some of my templates from the original version of this quilt pattern. I kept them with the rest of the project when packing for the retreat, thinking that I may want to look at them. I also included extra copies of the paper template for the ring sections as I know some quilters had hacked the original pattern by paper-piecing the sections.

Once at the retreat, while talking about the single girl quilt with my guildmate Amanda, I realized that it would be a fun experiment to do at least one ring in each of the methods:
–The original where each cut of fabric has a template
–The paper-pieceing hack of the original
–The new method laid out in “Free-wheeling Single Girl”

I started with the paper-piecing hack. What I did was use a ring section from “free-wheelin” and sew fabric to it. I did not mark any sub-sections within the template. Here’s the ring:

Rossie's Single Girl Quilt4
A few notes on this…
(1) I think the spacing and angles are a bit too tight and odd. If I continued with this method, I’d keep my eye on that. I suspect it would easily resolve itself.
(2) There’s are obvious problem with the way the 4 sections went together: you can see the joints very obviously because they don’t line up correctly.  Now, this is probably fixable, though it would take a bit of work. I opted NOT to fix it as I think it will be informative for the students at Sewtopia to see this mistake. Where did the mistake happen? It happened when I squared up the four blocks that make each ring. You have to square them up, its in the pattern, but there’s also a note about doing it carefully so that your sections will meet up nicely. I blew right past that note. I did much better on the later rings.  Though I do think I still need to figure out a better way to go it consistently, because if you noticed that the rings are slightly different sizes in the overall image, that’s because they way I was working wasn’t consistent enough.

Rossie's Single Girl Quilt7

Next up I made this ring (above)  using all the individual templates from the original pattern version. I found the process time-consuming, but meditative and enjoyable. Please note: I Xeroxed my templates onto overhead projector plastic. This made it very easy to get that perfect fussy cut. That’s probably the biggest bonus of this method: the ability to fussy cut with precision.

Rossie's Single Girl Quilt3

Third, I did the free-wheelin’ rings using the method Denyse describes in the new pattern version. These went the fastest and were much easier to do well than I thought they would be. I can see why Denyse reissued the pattern with this variation. I think people are going to be really happy with the method when they give it a try.

Rossie's Single Girl Quilt2

My fourth ring includes a section from each method, plus a ring section that is a single cut of fabric. I love that single cut! I can see a whole quilt made from these, with the only downside being that cutting the arc from a single cut of fabric leaves a pretty odd scrap.  Also, if you do this, pay close attention to the directionality of the fabric within the ring in relation to how it will be placed in the quilt.

I finished my quilt top at four rings and added a big border of gold around them.

Rossie's Single Girl Quilt5The pattern calls for repeated blocks throughout the top, as in the following image from the pattern….

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Image from the pattern by Denyse Schmidt

Overall, I had a very fun time putting this quilt together and think it will make a great class at Sewtopia.  I think the biggest thing to watch out for is the method in squaring up the blocks.  Think through it carefully and do it the same way each time so that you don’t end up with blocks with obvious joins, rings that are different sizes, or a quilt that won’t lay flat.

 

And, a note about fabric choices: I really enjoyed having a big selection of fabrics to cut from to make my rings.  I had about 40 prints in teal/white/red/black/green/gold and a variety of brightnesses.  If you make this on a retreat, bring a big selection of prints from your chosen palette!

This Post Has 9 Comments

  1. Hi Rossie!!!
    THANK YOU so very much for trying this out for us. I too have tried to “improv” the original version, but I had a hard time lining up the rings. I had to trim a little off and hope for the best (you can see my version on IG). I heard that Denyse was re-issuing this pattern in improv and heard that she fixed the issue with the original and re-sized the rings. Which made me feel better, I thought the problem was me (thought that could still be the case LOL) because curve piecing really isn’t really my thing. Will have to give the new pattern and templates a try.
    Dianne
    IG: dbienick

  2. Thanks for sharing all these details. It is excellent information for Sewtopia Atlanta attendees. I’m sure I will be returning to this a few times before April. (I love the bits of gold in each ring.)

  3. Wow, looks fab! Great detail explanation – and yes, SIngle Girl ( or revisited) is on my bucket list…

  4. Love your version with 4 rings and so much negative space. And your block from a single fabric thrown in the mix really adds interest. I’m so excited I just found out I will going to Sewtopia (got in on a cancellation) This is great information!

  5. Thanks for this interesting post! I bypassed this craze the last time, but I really like it and it’s SO helpful to post about process and mistakes to learn from. Love the colours you’ve chosen!

  6. I am sooooo tempted by the freewheeling pattern, I’ve had my single girl top in the wip pile for nearly a year as I just can’t face any more of those templates!

  7. Thank you for this post. I’ve just ordered the new free wheeling pattern and will definitely be coming back to your post for reminders! This has been a quilt I’ve wanted to make for years! So excited!

  8. I’m almost finished with my Single Girl quilt made with the original pattern and I didn’t have too many problems with the pattern pieces (other than the huge time commitment). So I’m curious how the new pattern is different.

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