Thursday's Threads: Quilting My Twister Quilt on the Longarm!

Happy to report that the Twister Quilt is on the longarm. It has been a while since I have quilted on my Gammill. I hope that I remember how to! This quilt is for my former Department of Natural Sciences at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma. When I was chair of the department, I had one of my quilts hanging in my office, However when I retired as chair, I took it with me. After all, it was my first quilt. I did enjoy seeing it every day at work, and many people commented on it, but I couldn't leave it there. I wrote about this quilt in a former post.

Anyway, this quilt is a Lil' Twister Pattern made by CS Designs. I saw a quilt made from the pattern, using their ruler, at a quilt shop in Shreveport, Louisiana. I just had to give it a try. The fabric is from Connecting Threads. I have had it in a my stash for a while. I really like the variety of the line. In addition, green is a university color. So it seemed perfect.

Ready to Longarm

The quilt looks complicated, but the pattern is easy to sew. You simply sew 5" blocks together using a variety of fabrics. Then you align the crosshairs of the ruler (shown in the picture below) on the intersection of four blocks and cut around the ruler with your rotary cutter. To see the new square block, look at the square formed around the four-fabric intersection in the quilt picture. Do you see the wonky four-square patch?

Lil' Twister Pattern and Template

By far, the most difficult part is sewing those wonky four-patches together so that you get pinwheels. I advise cutting and sewing in one sitting. A stiff breeze or the pounce of a cat could mean disaster. I ended up cutting a row and then sewing the row, so that I did not get mixed up. I did not have a design wall at that time, but I think that a design wall would help. Once all of the rows were sewn, it was fairly easy to sew the rows together to get pinwheels.

Close up of Quilt

I must say that I really like the results of the piecing. I found that the higher the contrast between fabrics, the more the pinwheels stand out. That is really a design choice. They have a smaller ruler as well that I have not tried yet, but it is on my list. It uses 3 1/2" squares!

I hope to finish this quilt by July 14th. I am hosting the Thank Goodness It's FInished Friday linky party that week. Come back to see how I do and to link your finishes. Don't know what a linky party is? See my previous post.

Happy Quilting!

​This post was originally published at JANDA Bend Quilts.