If you’ve seen a zig-zag quilt, you’ll immediately see the fascination. It looks like giant bands of rick-rack trim sewn into a quilt — but really, the zig-zag effect is achieved with a series of triangles and a trick of the eye.
Now, you might look at a zig-zag quilt and figure it’s pretty straightforward to make — but it turns out there are a couple of different ways to cut your triangle pieces and a couple of different ways to assemble them, too.
Check out these quilt tutorials for great instructions and, better yet, for the photographs and illustrations that are soooo essential to make sense of each quilter’s cutting and piecing methods –
I love the way this shows how the quilting community tends to share ideas and build on each others’ creativity, too:
Taylor Groneck has a quick tutorial for a zig-zag quilt based on a pattern in Denyse Schmidt Quilts, and with the advice of…
Nettie Pete (of Etsy and A Quilt Is Nice fame) who shares her Zig-Zag Quilt Tutorial for the quilt inspired by…
The Purl Bee’s Zig Zag Quilt. The Purl Bee is the blog of Joelle & Jennifer Hoverson’s awesome and inventive crafty-sewing shop, Purl, by the way — and if you visit The Purl Bee, better plan to set aside a couple hours to explore… and you’ll want to check out their Triangle Tutorial, too, if you’ve ever had trouble making nice trim corners.
In fact, most quilters (except maybe the real quilting divas among us) agree that the main challenge of a zig-zag quilt — once you’ve picked the fabrics and planned the colours layout — is to take care to get the points of the triangles lined up right when you’re sewing them together.
Another help for this might be the triangle templates and clear how-to illustrations in a new free zig-zag quilt pattern that Anna Maria Horner, author of Seams to Me: 24 New Reasons to Love Sewing, offers as a free PDF download on her blog. “The Folk Dance” is what Horner calls her version of the vintage zig-zag quilt pattern.
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I’m not a sewing person, but my mom’s gonna check this out! ^^ It’s what younger generations are missing out, the art of sewing & handicrafts. I’m really ashamed. :(
At my house here in New Glasgow I have two handmade quilts one is a crazy quilt and the other is an oldfashion sqares one made of old jeans and cords, you have to enjoy the artistry of a quilt well made.
Nice to find your blog!
I love hand made quilts. i just never have the patience to complete one.
Here is a great tutorial without piecing triangles.
http://beesquarefabrics.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-make-zig-zag-quilt-without.html