How did he do that? Amethyst Quilt Explained!

Dream Big with Peter Byrne.

Hello folks, for those who haven’t meet me, my name is Peter Byrne.

I am an international award-winning, published modern quilter and teacher with a deep passion for innovation and design. My strength is maintaining a fresh approach to quilting, with original designs and technical mastery.

My goal is innovation, my passion is creativity and I am thrilled to have opportunities to share new techniques within the quilting community.

While attending QuiltCon 2020, my quilt titled ‘Starring You’ won Best in Show and my quilt titled ‘Cityscape” won Best Machine Quilting Frameless.

I started making quilts in 2009 and to further my quilting experience, in January of 2017, I joined the Toronto Modern Quilting Guild, and when I walked into that first guild meeting, I had never quilted a quilt.

It was at this time, I became a full time student of the craft and 2 years later, I designed and made Starring You. I’m very excited to share my quilts, dreams and ambitions with you and look forward to interacting and entertaining you!

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Hello folks, I have exciting news!

I’m changing my approach to become more interactive and present with you. Normally, I only post pictures of finished quilts, but that’s going to change in ways to provide you with more incite on my quilt making process.

Since winning QuiltCon, ‘Best in Show’ and ‘Best Machine Quilting Frameless’ I have been bombarded with ‘How To’ questions, that I would love to answer.

Here is my promise to you! As I make quilts, I will post pictures along the way and include descriptions of techniques and products that I incorporate into my quilt making.

This is a whole new adventure and I invite you to ask questions, leave comments and share my posts, and please know, I look forward to answering all your inquiries!

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Hover-Quilting Explained!

Hover-quilting is a different approach to raw edge appliqué. This innovative technique produces not only a beautiful controlled frayed edge, but also creates the illusion of your piecing hovering above the quilt top.

Traditional raw edge appliqué uses fusible web to permanently attach and hold down your appliqué unit. With hover-quilting, all the Diamond units will be temporarily basted using a non-permanent, wash-away glue stick.

In addition, the construction of a hover-quilt is different as a hover-quilt has 4 layer, the backing, batting, quilt top and the 4th layer is everything you temporarily baste and then appliqué to the quilt top.

When you zoom in and look closely at my hover-quilts, you will see a beautiful frayed edge that creates a texture not seen with traditional piecing. This technique allows for complete freedom of composition as you can take any shape and appliqué it in this unique way!

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Cherrywood Brand Ambassador.

Hello Folks! I’m honoured to announce I have partnered with Cherrywood Fabrics, and it’s official, I’m their Brand Ambassador! A little bit about Cherrywood Fabrics: info@cherrywoodfabrics.com

Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabric is available in 300 colours, and has subtle tone-on-tone variations which creates richness and depth not found in other fabric. Cherrywood’s unique suede texture and beautiful gradations will inspire you!

For my next quilt, titled ‘Diamond’ , I have paired Cherrywood solids with Jennifer Sampou’s, Chalk & Charcoal prints. I have chose 15 vibrant prints and 30 equally stunning solids and will be using the hover-quilting technique to construct this quilt. To view my hover quilts, go to @hoverquilting on Instagram!

In my next post I will cover an overview of the quilt design, fabric preparation, cutting and organizing!

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Rebuilding your Pressing Board.

Hello folks. I started my day today, rebuilding my pressing board. This is an easy project to do! I purchased the MDF board at Home Depot already cut to size, that being 16 inches by 48 inches.

This size works really well when you are pressing the full width of fabric, which on average is about 43 inches, leaving just enough space for your iron.

My pressing board sits on top of a side board I purchased at IKEA. It is the exact size needed, the height is good and I put wheels on mine to make it easier to move.

There are 3 layers to this process. First I wrapped the board in clear vinyl and just used packing tape to hold it down in place. The second layer is cotton batting, pulling it taught and again held it down in place with packing tape. The third and final layer is a piece of canvas, again pulled taught and taped down on the backside of the board with duct tape.

This should last me at leased 6 months and will provide a perfectly flat, firm surface for ironing and pressing. When I switched from an ironing board to a pressing station, the precision of my piecing drastically improved!

When you have the right tools for the right job it makes a world of difference. I highly recommend this, its totally worth giving a go!

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Let’s get started with pressing our fabric!

To prepare your fabric for cutting, I like to use Mary Ellens Best Press along with my Oliso irons to flatten and make it stiff.

I’m cutting 2 1/2 inch strips, from half yard cuts, so I’m only going to apply and press about 3 inches of fabric.

After cutting the strips, I’m going to stack the 2 ½ inch strips, good sides together and cut 5 inch units. Then I’m going to cut the 5 inch unit from corner to corner and create a ¼ piece of the diamond unit.

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The Oliso Brand of irons are the best on the market and have features that make them very user friendly for quilting!

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Diamond quilt, fabric requirements.

The first thing you need to consider is what size quilt you would like to make. My quilts tend to be a little larger, so 75 wide and 90 long is an average size for me, so lets work out how much fabric we will need to get started.

Each diamond shape unit measures 8 ½ tall and 4 ¼ wide, so lets do a little simple math. When I take the height of the diamond shaped unit at 8 ½ and times this by 10 ½ units, I get 89 ¼.

When I take the width of the diamond shaped unit at 4 ¼ and times this by 18 units, I get 76 ½. So my finished quilt size will come in at 76 ½ wide x 89 ¼ long.

Lets calculate the fabric requirements!

To start, all fabric required to make up the diamond shaped units, will be cut from 2 ½ strip.Lets calculate the square inches of one, 2 ½ strip x width of fabric. 2 ½ x 40 = 100 square inches.

Now lets look at the total square inches in the finished quilt.

76 ½ wide x 89 ¼ long = 6827.63

Lets divided 6827. 63 by 100 square inches= 68.27 strips, lets round that up to 70 strips. 17 colour ways x 4 strips =68

I know a lot of people don’t like doing the math, but you need to have some understanding of your fabric requirements to get started, and getting started is the fun part!

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Let’s get started cutting and sewing our fabric!

After cutting the strips, I’m going to stack the 2 ½ inch strips, good sides together and cut 5 inch units. Then I’m going to cut the 5 inch unit from corner to corner and create a ¼ piece of the diamond unit.

Time to start sewing! I’m going to lower my stitch length to 1.9 because l will be pressing my seams open. I will chain piece 6 units at a time, then take them to the pressing board and press the seams open and continue this process until half of that colour way are sewn together, saving the other half to make up other colour combinations.

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Making really great progress with these Diamonds! Each one will be unique onto its own and so many combinations to see this fabric come to life!

This is my first experience with working with @cherrywoodfabrics and I’m incredibly impressed with the look and feel! A dream to work with!

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Quilters Select, Cutting Mats, Rulers and Rotary Cutters.

Since my QuiltCon experience, my new quilting opportunities have been humbling. I have partnered with some of the leaders in the industry and as I’m introduced and learn about their offerings, I promise to give you the goods on new and exciting products and techniques!

I would like to say a big thank you to Alex Anderson, from ‘The Quilt Show’ for introducing me to the most kind and amazing people at RNK Distributing.

This past spring, while teaching my Hover-quilting Workshop in Niagara Falls, Laura Coia, from ‘Sew Very Easy’, was in my class. Laura was very giving of her knowledge of new quilting products and introduced me to ‘Quilters Select’ cutting mats, rotary cutters and quilting rulers.

I was amazed with Quilters Select rulers. The markings on the cutting mats and rulers are very clear and easy to read, but it was the special texture on the backside of the rulers that sold me. Alex Anderson has come out with quilting rulers that do not slip and the rotary cutter is weighted, so it takes less effort to cut your fabric.

I will be the first to admit when I first picked up the rotary cutter I thought it was very heavy, but after working with it for just one day, it became weightless. My cutting has become more accurate and so much easier to do!

Thank you Quilters Select!

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Stephanie Socha Podcast

Hello folks! I made pretty good progress today with my Diamond blocks! I also had a lot of fun doing an hour and a half interview with Podcaster, Stephanie Socha. We had such a great conversation about my QuiltCon experience followed by my quilting journey story. I will let you know next month when it airs! You can check out Stephanie’s podcasts at stephaniesochadesign.com

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Curated Quilts.

It’s April so the appliqué issue of Curated Quilts is now available to order. I’m so honoured to have my Hover-quilt called ‘Pathways’ showcased in The Appliqué Gallery! Cheers everyone!

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First round of Diamonds are finished!

Hey everyone, I’m celebrating the first round of making Diamond units is complete! Ya!

Next. I’m going to start mixing colours together to blend the overall design. It’s at this time with the design to choose what colours will be placed beside each other.

With my design I’m going to take the neutrals and place them towards the center of the quilt, surrounded by the purple’s and then working my way to the edges of the quilt with the gold, orange and reds.

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Piecing the backing.

Hello folks! Today I’m going to make a pieced backing, so I pulled out some of my neutrals to work with. The finished size of my Diamond quilt is coming in at 80 ¾ x 90 ¾.

 I’m going to add two extra inches all the way around the backing to help my control while quilting, therefore the backing will be 84 ¾ x 94 ¾, so lets round that by to 85 x 95.

I’m going to approach making the back by sewing together horizontal strips, with a finished size of 8 ½. When I put together the backing, batting and quilt top, I’m going to stitch in the ditch from the backside.

I’m doing this for two reasons. One, to anchor the three layers together and second, to establish horizontal lines going across my quilt top. These sew lines will be my guild lines when appliquéing the Diamond units to the quilt top.

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Cutting is all done!

I added 2 inches extra to the first and last row (top & bottom). This will give me a little extra fabric for quilting, but more importantly when I square up my quilt for binding, I will not have a seam inside my binding that would make it harder to hand stitch on the backside.

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How do you move your fabric from your cutting board to your sewing machine? I use my Quilters Select quilting rulers! The 8 ½ x 24 worked perfect for my piecing today!

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I finished my pieced backing today!

I have a curtain line across my design wall so I can hang my quilt and work on the composition. You will see that in a couple of days. I have to sew together my quilt top and bast all three layers together before I start the design. Getting there!

My design wall really helped me visualize putting together my backing today. I hung each strip up individually to get started and then moved them around until I was happy with the layout. Then I felt confident sewing them together!

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Do you use a leader and ender when you are piecing?

Not familiar? Leaders and Enders help control your thread and lifts the presser foot up just enough so when you are chain piecing your fabric will go under your presser foot much easier.

I cut up left over binding strips to make Leaders and Enders.

When you are piecing, start with a leader and stitch until the leader is just past the needle and stop. Then go ahead and do your chain piecing and after your last unit finish with a ender. This is now set up for when you are ready to repeat.

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That Purple Thang!

This handy little gadget is called “That Purple Thang” and helps me separate my seams so I can press them open. I tend to use a lot of steam so to make refilling my Oliso iron really easy, I use a small plant watering container with a long spout. The Oliso water reservoir is large and super easy to refill! I love my Oliso irons!

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