Doctor Who Quilt Update #7

My 11th Doctor jacket fabric order from Spoonflower finally arrived this week, so that means more sewing! I had planned to work on the Gallifreyan text squares first, but once I had the plaid in my hands all that changed. 

I spent the week thinking about where the bow tie blocks would fit into the quilt and decided on a strip of bow ties on point (arranged point to point) with the block being a 5.5-inches square when finished. Now that the weekend is here - and my horrible cold/sore throat/laryngitis is on the way out - I headed back to my sewing room.

Good contrast between the two fabrics for this block is required to really see the bow tie when the square is finished. I had already decided on red bow ties because the 11th Doctor jacket fabric has a red stripe through the plaid.

The decision about size was an easy one. A long time ago, I found a tutorial on YouTube about how to construct a dimensional bow tie quilt block. The center of the bow tie forms little pockets that give the square some added interest because the center sticks up a bit from the rest of the square. Luckily for me, the tutorial is  still online: 3-Dimensional Bow Tie Block (just under 9 minutes). I would have preferred to embed the tutorial here, but I just couldn't get it to work. It's worth using the link to see the block constructed, though.

The bow tie square is constructed from 5 squares, 3 that form the bow tie and 2 for the background. The woman conducting the tutorial warns about using squares smaller than 3-inches, and if you watch the tutorial, you will see why. The center square for the bow tie gets scrunched during construction. Anything smaller than a 3-inch square would be impossible to sew and would definitely get lost!

In the tutorial, the bow ties have pointy ends, as you can see from the screen shot below from the tutorial. As we all know, the Doctor's bow tie is not pointy!

 Tutorial Bow Tie Quilt Square

I wanted a bow tie that sort of looks like the Doctor's, so I took the bow tie block once step further. I cropped off the pointy ends and replaced them with more plaid background fabric. As much as possible, I tried to line up the red lines in the plaid. 

The first image below shows the finished bow tie block with 2.75-inch squares of plaid background pinned in place over the pointy ends of the bow tie (right sides of the fabric are together). I drew a pencil line across the block to guide my sewing.

 2.75-inch background square overlaying the quilt block

The next step was to sew along the pencil line. I was VERY careful before doing this step because I wanted the red lines in the plaid to line up with the red lines you can see in the background fabric on the other side of the block. Even though I checked and double checked, I still had to pull out some stitches, reposition the small square and resew the seam - several times! Thank goodness for a sharp seam ripper.

 Seams sewn in matching red thread

After sewing, I flipped the square over on itself, pressed the seam down, and cut off the fabric under the background fabric. There are actually three layers of fabric before the trimming is complete, and you need to eliminate the two bottom ones to control the bulk in the block. With the dimensional center to the bow tie, there's more than enough bulk already.

 Small background fabric squares pressed and trimmed

Here's the finished block below. I poked the eraser of my pencil into one of the "pockets" formed at the center of the bow tie. Each edge of the center square is also open like this one.

  

 

Completed bow tie block with dimensional center

The next step is to form the bow ties into a strip that can be sewn into the quilt. I decided to put the bow tie blocks on point.

 Four bow tie blocks arranged "on point" 

I also had to decide what the strip was going to look like. With the bow ties set on point, the quilt strip is made up of smaller strips set at a 45-degree angle. I chose a dark blue star fabric to add contrast and bring some blue into the strip. I did audition other fabrics in my stash, but nothing worked like that blue one.

There was a lot of sewing and trimming involved in making this strip, which I've shown draped along two chairs below.

  Finished bow tie strip

In the next image, you can see one of the diagonal strips that make up the larger, long strip that will go into the quilt. The bow tie block is set on point in the center of the strip, and the triangle at the lower left and upper right make up the rest of the small strip. Actually, constructing it is several steps, too. The bow tie block was 5.5-inches square before I set it into the small strip, so I cut  two 5.5-inch squares from the dark blue star fabric for each strip. When the sewing was done, what looks like triangles were really squares sticking up at the top and bottom that had to be trimmed down to triangles. I did the trimming carefully using my rotary cutter and 24-inch quilting ruler, cutting away part of each dark blue square exactly 1/4-inch from the top and bottom points of the bow tie block. I'm saving the scraps in case I need them later in another part of the quilt.

 

Part of the bow tie strip showing construction of smaller diagonal strips,

running in the image from lower left to upper right

Once the bow tie strip was done, it was about 60-inches long. Time to add it to the TARDIS section! I also had to add batting and some backing fabric, the same planet fabric I used on the back side of the TARDIS section, so there are lots of layers here.Under the TARDIS section (that you can't see the next picture) is pinned from the bottom up: a strip of batting and a strip of backing fabric; the TARDIS section has three layers (the backing, batting, and TARDIS on the top); then on top of the TARDIS section is pinned the bow tie strip. There are six layers in all that have to sewn together carefully. Here they are pinned with the bow tie strip flipped over so you can see what it will look like after it's sewn.

 All layers for the bow tie strip pinned in place

With all those layers, sewing is slow and somewhat tedious. You have to sew with the underside of the bow tie blocks showing up. This is necessary because to keep the nice points on the bow tie blocks that you worked so hard to achieve, you have to sew the long seam joining the bow tie strip and the TARDIS section exactly 1/4-inch from the edge of all six layers of fabric and right next to the points of the bow tie square. By sewing with the underside of the bow tie strip showing, you can see the red thread coming to a point in the corners of the block and sew right into the point. When you flip the strip, the points are still there and perfect! Nothing else will do. If you chop off a point, you have to rip out the seam and resew it until it perfect!

 

 Close-up of one bow tie block with nice points in the four corners of the block.

So, finally, the strip is sewn to the left of the TARDIS section. The long seam is pressed, and I'm back to three layers again in both sections. In the picture below, only the quilting is left for the bow tie strip. Each blue triangle has a straight pin in it to keep the layers together. But here it is! Another section completed!

  Two sections of the quilt completed with the bow tie strip ready to quilt

Well, I won't be able to procrastinate on the Gallifreyan text squares any longer. There are some decisions to make, though. How large will the text square be? I originally thought the squares would be 4-inches finished, but now I have to decide whether I want them the same size as the bow tie blocks, which would make the Gallifreyan strip the same width as the bow tie strip. However, I don't have a lot of that dark blue star fabric left, having used over half the 1-yard piece with which I started. I have some scraps, but will they be enough? Maybe, the Gallifreyan strip should have a red background instead of dark blue to bring some of the bow tie fabric over to the other side of the quilt. Also, I have eleven Gallifreyan text images I want to use, so maybe, the text blocks should be smaller so I can fit all of them on the right side of the TARDIS. Maybe, I can have the strip underneath (and above?) the TARDIS as well as to the right. See? Lots of things to think through before I start cutting fabric.  So, until I figure out what's next, have a good one!