“What if that’s the look you’re going for?” asked Jason.
“Then by all means, follow your heart,” Gretchen replied, smiling. “You’ll find that there are few hard-and-fast rules here at Elm Creek Quilts. Usually when the so-called ‘quilt police’ insist upon telling us what we can or can’t do, we thank them for sharing and then cheerfully ignore them.”
“‘Quilt police’?” Paige echoed, as the rest of the class grinned or chuckled.
“You know,” said Lindsay, “the kind of people who believe that the onlycorrectway to do something istheirway.”
“For your Nine-Patch blocks, we’ll be using reproduction prints of dark and medium values for the focus fabrics and unbleached muslin for the background,” said Gretchen. “Reproduction fabrics are designed by modern manufacturers using palettes and prints from bygone eras, but they’re made using modern methods and dyes. A reproduction fabric is often an exact duplicate of a historic print, but it could also be a historically accurate adaptation of a historic print. Reproductions are different from actual vintage fabrics, which can be difficult to source and are often too expensive for your average quilter.”
“We use reproduction fabrics all the time in the costume department,” Edna remarked. “We couldn’t get by without them.”
Gretchen nodded, pleased. “Maybe you’ll see some of your own favorite prints in our collection.” She beckoned to Sylvia, who returned to the front of the room and helped Gretchen distribute the stacks of folded fabrics evenly upon the table. “Please come on up and choose one fat quarter of a focus fabric—the darks and mediums, here—and one fat quarter of unbleached muslin. We’ll start with those of you in the front row and work our way back.”
“?‘Fat quarter’?” Olivia echoed as she rose from her front row seat and went forward to browse the stash.
“The cotton fabrics we use are about forty-four inches wide from selvage to selvage. The selvages are the top and bottom edges of the fabric, which are finished during the weaving process to keep the fabric from fraying or unraveling,” Sylvia explained. “Fabric is sold by the yard, so when you buy a yard of quilting fabric, you’re buying a piece thirty-six by forty-four inches.”
“If you divide a yard of fabric into four equal pieces by making three cuts selvage to selvage, you have four strips, each nine incheswide. Quilters call those skinny quarters,” said Gretchen. “If instead you divide that yard by making one cut down the middle vertically, and a second horizontally, you would end up with four eighteen-by-twenty-two-inch pieces—fat quarters. Most quilters find that fat quarters are more versatile than skinny quarters because of their shape and size.”
By this time, everyone seated in the first two rows had selected their fat quarters, so Julia, Edna, and the other back row students went up front to pick theirs. Julia chose a lovely Prussian blue fabric with a floral vine pattern in white.
“Our next step is to make a template,” said Gretchen. “For a twelve-inch Nine-Patch block, we’ll need only one template, a three-inch square. To make hers, Sadie Henderson might have used stiff paper or newsprint, or even a piece of thin wood, but we’re going to use card stock.”
“Another nod to modernity?” asked Olivia.
“Exactly,” said Gretchen. “Now, using your pencil, scissors, ruler, and card stock, make a three-inch square. Since this is such a simple shape, we won’t be fussy about exactly how you do it, but you should be as precise as you can.”
Julia promptly took pencil and ruler in hand, lined up the three-inch marks of a corner of the ruler with a corner of the card stock, traced the ruler’s perpendicular edges, and cut out a square. She assumed she would be the first to finish, but Edna had beat her to it, and was already leaning across the aisle to help a bemused Dylan. Gretchen and Sylvia were strolling the aisles, offering assistance and praise where needed. Belatedly realizing that as a fairly experienced quilter, she too could help the newbies, Julia quickly glanced around to see whether anyone was struggling, but Gretchen and Sylvia had everything well in hand. She resolved to be quicker out of the starting gate next time.
“Is everyone ready for the next step?” Gretchen asked, returning to the front of the room. “Very good. Now we’ll cut out the five dark and four light squares we’ll need for our blocks.” Adjusting theoverhead mirror so the class could see the top of her worktable in the reflection, Gretchen demonstrated how to use the template to make block pieces. “First, lay your fabric right side down on your cutting board. Next, place your template on the wrong side of the fabric and trace around it carefully, using whichever pencil shows up best.”
Gretchen paused to watch while the class dutifully followed her instructions. “Well done,” she said when everyone had finished. “Now take your scissors and carefully cut a quarter of an inch around the drawn line.”
“Why don’t we cut on the line?” asked Paige.
“The drawn line is your sewing line. The extra quarter inch is the seam allowance,” Gretchen explained. “If you prefer, rather than estimating, you can use your ruler to mark a quarter-inch line all the way around your template tracing. Then cut out your piece. Just be sure to cut along the outermost line.”
Julia preferred the accuracy of that second drawn line, so she took up her ruler and pencil again and drew a cutting line. She had no sooner picked up her scissors when Edna set hers down, already finished cutting her first piece. “You must have a lot of practice estimating seams,” Julia said, impressed.
“Decades of it,” said Edna. “My problem is that I’m used to working with larger seam allowances—a half inch for most seams so the garment drapes better, a full inch for side seams, and a good three inches for hems. These narrow seam allowances will take some getting used to.”
“If they were any bigger,” said Julia as she cut out her Prussian blue square, “I imagine it would be difficult to press seams flat in places where several pieces meet, like in the center of a LeMoyne Star.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Thank you for that, Edna. You’re the expert, but you make me feel so clever.”
“Has everyone made their first square?” Gretchen asked as she strolled the aisles, nodding in satisfaction at the chorus of yeses.“Good. Now I want you to measure your square. Is it precisely three and a half inches square?”
“How precise do you mean?” asked Jason. “Is an eighth of an inch, give or take, good enough?”
“Sorry, but no, it isn’t,” said Gretchen. “I do meanpreciselythree and a half inches. An error of an eighth of an inch might not seem like anything to fuss about, but such mistakes can accumulate over the width of a block, and over the span of a quilt top. Before you know it, your square is no square at all and your rectangular quilt is a rhombus.”
Jason studied his fabric piece. “When you put it like that, I think I need a do-over.”
“As do I,” Nigel lamented. Glancing over his shoulder at Julia, he said, “You neglected to warn me how difficult this would be.”
“Don’t blame me,” Julia teased. “How was I to know you couldn’t draw a square?”
