Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.com popularized this clever method of making a second quilt while chain piecing. Many quilters stitch off onto a scrap of fabric, sometimes called a "spider," to avoid having to hold the threads at the beginning of the next row of stitching. Bonnie took the idea and made it productive -- why not use pre-cut squares, rather than a scrap of fabric that you will throw away?
She calls her method "Leaders & Enders." Leaders, because you sew from the small squares onto your quilt piece. Enders, because you stitch from the quilt piece onto the smaller square.
And the Leaders & Enders don't have to be squares. Each summer, Bonnie proposes a different quilt block design as the year's "Leaders & Enders" challenge. This year, it's tumblers. I cut up a lot of scraps into light and dark tumblers and stacked them in a plastic shoe box:
The note on the side of the box reminds me how many tumblers I need to make each row, and how many rows to make a lap-size quilt.
Each morning when I sit down to sew, I stitch a light and dark tumbler piece together.
When I've stitched across the tumbler, I place the first block of the day's project under the presser foot, and off I sew!
It is amazing how quickly these little "Leaders & Enders" become a whole quilt! Storm is lurking in the doorway, nervous because she knows I don't like dogs in the bedroom!
I'm also using the cut-off triangles from a Flying Geese project to make tiny half square triangles. When I get them all stitched, I'll square them up using my littlest Bloc-Loc ruler to make 1" HSTs. Then I'll stitch them together to make a little bag.
I just a week, I've collected quite a few HSTs!
The "A Quilt Block a Day" Facebook group is making "Birds in Flight" blocks this season. October 2 was the 10th day of Autumn, so I'm right on target with my block count. I haven't decided which layout I like better -- but it's early days, yet!
This diagonal set will require setting triangles, but it will also make a larger quilt.
Which layout do you like?
From the desk of your
