I finished piecing my latest quilt (see previous posts here and here). I thought I would share a couple of pictures of the progress I made in the past weeks.

Did you noticed the change in the quilt name? Yes, I finally settled on a name for it. In and Out quilt became Amalgam quilt. I brainstormed ideas with my sister last week. Well, she actually proposed a lot of great names, I listened and picked one. She really understood the essence of my quilt. I’ll use her words in French first: “Je trouve qu’il y a quelque chose d’humain dans ta courtepointe, comme deux univers qui se rencontrent et qui apprennent à s’apprivoiser, à se connaître, à se comprendre. Tout en demeurant uniques et en gardant leur propre individualité”. Basically, she said that it was like two worlds meeting. They learn to tame, know and understand each other. Still, they remain unique and keep their own individuality. She said she couldn’t find the right words to express it, but I think that really sums it up. And I find that Amalgam is a great word to describe it.

As I said in my last post, I first started by piecing the smaller triangles in groups of 4 to form a triangle of the same size as the larger ones. For those, I decided to press the seam allowances open. With the contrasting colors, I was afraid that the red fabrics would show up through the light blue fabrics. Since there was a lot of back and forth between the sewing machine and the iron, I decided to use my Clover Mini-Iron. I’ve made my-self a portable ironing board recently (similar to this one). I placed it on my sewing table and I just had to roll to my left on my chair to go press my seams. I bought this mini-iron a few years ago and I never got to really use it. I thought this was a good project for it. It went quite well to open up the seam allowances.

Here you can see how I was aligning a triangle to assemble by matching its edges and triangle tips with the previous edges and dog ears.

Once the group of 4 was pieced, I trimmed the remaining dog ears.

Then, I assembled the larger triangles together row by row. Some tutorials/patterns suggest to press the seam allowances to one side and to alternate between rows. This is to help the seams nest and have the points match up more easily when you sew the rows together. I decided to always press the seams allowances towards the triangles pointing down. This has the same effect when joining the rows, but I find it easier to keep track of it this way.

Here, you can see the pinning for joining the rows together. Before I did so, I also trimmed the dog-ear triangle tips. Once the rows were sewn together,  I decided to press their seam allowances open.

Here you can see how I was aligning the triangle points when joining the rows. I’m quite happy with how they turned out. Beside a few, most of them are quite precise.

Once the top was finished piecing, I trimmed both side edges at 1/4″ from the last  triangle points. This way, these points will end up on the edge of the quilt once the binding will be attached.

Last week, I was also able to piece the back panel. I’ve used fabrics from the PB&J collection by Basic Grey for Moda. I had 2 yards of the main print. I sliced it at 16″ inch from the bottom edge and inserted 10″ of another print. Then, I sliced the assembled piece lengthwise at 18″ from the right edge. I inserted some leftover strips used to cut the smaller triangles on the front as well as a 10″ strip of another print (2 x WOF). These measures are approximate, but you get the idea.

Even my binding is ready! Now, I need to get the quilting done. I hope you enjoy reading my process.