Spiders, and Leaders and Enders

I think leaders and enders is a fairly commonly-used term among quilters.

Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.com is credited for coining the term that's used to explain how to piece together fabrics, using a quarter-inch seam, in between other sewing. She even wrote books about it! Adventures with Leaders and Enders, and More Adventures with Leaders and Enders.

The idea is that while you're sewing at the machine, you don't let any unsewn thread go to waste, or let it get caught in a thread nest on the underside of fabric.

If there's always a piece of fabric in the sewing machine, those threads don't make trouble. Back in the 1980s I learned to sew over a scrap of fabric, over and over again, to ensure all the threads were engaged. It's called a "thread spider" because of the way it looks. (Internet photo.)

Bonnie taught us that instead of wasting thread on a spider that didn't serve any purpose, we should be piecing another quilt!

• leaders - the little bit of piecing you start with before sewing the primary project you're working on, and 
• enders - the little bit of piecing you shove in at the end of your primary project. 

Doesn't knowing you can make a "free" quilt make you feel frugal?! 

Since beginning to sew leaders and enders in October 2011, between my own scraps and those of friends, I've been well-supplied. Most quilters don't keep fabric bits smaller than 2" X 2". My size limit is 1-1/2" X 1-1/2", so it's no surprise that friends are happy to pass their smallest scraps to me.

Thus far, I've made more than 200 16-patch blocks that measure 4-1/2" X 4-1/2" unfinished. Last year I gave 115 of them to Big Cypress Quilters who turned them into quilts for Project Linus. This is one of the tops that was sewn by two quilters who donated the finished quilt.

Now I've accumulated another 80-plus 16-patches and have been wondering how I'll use them.

Then I read this blog post with a picture of a little quilt called "Palmateer Point," learned it was made with 2" squares, and decided to work-up the design with my 1-1/2" squares.

So I took some of my 16-patches,

and some 4-patches that hadn't yet been sewn into 16-patches,

used the Magic 8 Method Craftsy tutorial to make 2-1/2" unfinished half-square triangles using Kona White and Sunflower Grunge by Basic Grey,

and put together this 8-1/2" high X 20-1/2" wide sample. I like it!

Perhaps once this row is complete - I'm aiming for 60" wide - I'll change the half-square triangle colors. Maybe white with orange. 👍 You know I like bright!

And, don't you agree that it's good to get in the habit of sewing leaders and enders? I'm looking forward to the long-term piecing this will take, in between other sewing projects.

And I have been sewing! I'm just not able to share the new project I'm excited about. It's for the Central Florida MQG Challenge which is due November 13. As always, each quilter's challenge piece is to be kept on the down-low so members can blindly choose their favorite at our November meeting. For this challenge, the only guideline is to choose a colors or an element from a non-quilting magazine - between pages 48-52 - that inspires a quilt, of any size!

Also, five of us have been working on the next QuiltCon Charity Quilt that we're sending to Pasadena, California in February 2018. That big quilt deserves a blog post of it's own. Linda