How To Make Prairie Points

Prairie Points are these showy little triangles peeping out of the seam on a quilt.  You'll find them most often along the edges of quilts.  Unliked scalloped edges, these are easy to make.  Here's how:

Select your fabric.  A dramatic contrast or stark stripes might give your project some punch.  If you choose something that 'matches' too closely, your prairie points may seem like a lot of work for very little visual impact.  (Here, I've used birch tree trunks, with batiks and a festive print.)  You can buy and yard and go back if you need more. 

Snip and rip off the selvedge piece with the fabric's name on it.  Now rip a straight line...  You do this by finding the fold of the fabric, and snipping about an inch in from the edge.  You will rip it from the middle to the edges in both directions at once.  Now you have a true straight line.

Cut Strips... Using a tape measure or the ruler on a cutting board, snip in about an inch on the fold, every 4 inches.  When you get to the last one, it might not be square if the fabric was not cut precisely, so I always throw the last piece into the 'bone pile' in my sewing room floor.  You will have it there if you need it, and if not you may use it later for potholders or pillowcases.

Make the Strips Square... Lay your strip longwise and make a snip every four inches, then rip each into a 4 inch square.  Tip:  If you are precise, lay 2 or 3 strips atop each other and cut multiples all the way thru instead of ripping. 

Stack and Fold... Stack them up on your ironing board.  Get one.  Fold into a triangle.  Fold into a triangle again.  Iron.  Stack 'em in a finished pile.  Repeat till all are done.  Tip:  If you use a stripe, you *might* prefer to fold them with the fold going the same direction.  If you're making horizontals and you get a vertical, turn it over.  Its magic!

Zigzag them Down... Sew these down onto your sashing or border strip using a zigzag stitch.  You'll hide that when you sew the quilt top seam.

Finish and Admire... Now lay your border strip under the quilt top.  Eleanor Burns, author of Quilt In A Day Series, gives this tip and it makes your project move more smoothly in the machine.  Quilt your regular size of seam.

I love these!  This is my first quilt with Prairie Points and they're so easy plus fancy.  When you quilt your top, you may wish to seam along whichever side you wish in order to lay them up toward the top of the bed, or down toward the edge of the quilt.

Optical Snowball Quilt Top, 1950s

1950s Optical Snowball

See yesterday's bowtie quilt for a similar yet different one.  This quilt top was made a decade earlier.  See how the colors are different, and have for example, complimentary color wheel colors in the turquoise and chartreuse?  (This is one of my fave color combinations).  See how the plaids are more "American Western"?  If you look at the turquoise and chartreuse "bow ties" in the lower righthand area, you'd see similarities with yesterday's quilt.  But look at how the circles are really round.  Quilters scream and run away at the thought of piecing round shapes.  Think about how round shapes are the opposite curve of the piece they're being attached-to.  Like putting in a gathered sleeve, you never quite know if you're on track until you get to the end and check to see if there is fabric overhanging on either side.

I adore this quilt.  Why?  Because the use of the black checkered gingham fabric makes me crazy!    Big round postholes are like a textural collage on the surface.  And in other places, the pattern drops mistily and indistinctly into the background.  Now look at the block below the red square.  Its like spaghetti or wheels in motion.  You can tell that the woman who made this quilt was not over-intellectualizing the process.  She just put things together any which way.  We could speculate that a quilt like this was made by a woman who learned her skills in the depression era, when it didn't really matter what the right way was... a seamstress just did whatever conserved the most fabric and minimized the most waste.  It was Lllooonnnnggg before the days of fussy-cutting quilt fabrics.

This quilt is small twin or personal quilt size.  It is a top only.  It would be for sale for $75 as a top, or $250 quilted and backed in the colors of the buyer's choice.  It could be edged out with a border of historically-accurate fabric to make a full, king, queen quilt for $450.  It is hand-sewn.