Every quilter has a stack of projects that they will get to "some day". One of mine has been this design, which was sent to me by my daughter in 2012!
I found it interesting because of the shape of the triangles, as well as the opportunity to use different fabric patterns. I also liked how the quilting reinforced the shapes.
However, we did not like the orange on black; too Halloweenish.
And notice that some of the fabrics are repeated on the left and right sides. Unless you were going to make it symmetrical, why do that when there are so many patterns available?
Having nothing to go on but this photo, I first had to decide how big to make my triangles. You can see that each pair is made up of an orange and a black. They are right triangles, so each pair makes a rectangle. So simple! Along with determining the triangle size, I had to decide how many to make in each half. I didn't want the finished piece to be too big. I could have a lot of small triangles or fewer larger ones. I played around and finally settled on a finished size of 2" x 8" for the side and base (you can figure out the hypotenuse if you wish). This size then worked well with 10 sets. I made a cardboard template, adding the 1/4" seam allowance all around. The same template was used for the colored fabric and the black background fabric.
Next....what color? Not orange. White would be a good contrast, but the patterns on the fabrics would be too subtle. Yellow? Maybe. Purple? Not enough contrast. OK.....blue or green? Wait!?!?! Why not make one of each? 👍👍
So....let's find 20 different green fabrics in the stash. Want some contrast, some interest, not all dots or batiks; stripes might be problematic. How about this one? No, that one. Move it here...no there. Eventually we had over 30 pieces cut and up on the design wall before deciding on the final set and arrangement. Sew the green triangles to the black ones, sew the 10 sets in a column, sew the 2 columns together, add extra black fabric on the four sides and presto! And I knew up front that I would mount these on stretcher bars, so I added enough black fabric to wrap around.
As mentioned above, I like the echo quilting, but I didn't want to do it in green, as I feel that lessens the green on black effect of the fabrics. You may have a different opinion; fair enough. So I used black thread (you may have to zoom in to see it). There is no quilting on the green fabrics at all!
For Zig Zag II, then, the blue fabrics. But to throw in a little twist, I decided to reverse the triangle pattern. What does this mean? See how the long edge of the green fab is on the top of each triangle on the left side, but on the bottom of each on the right? So, I wanted to do the opposite for this one. Note: the short side still needed to be in the center. And you can't just "spin" the template / triangle set; if you do, it will still come out the same way! It has to be flipped so that the side facing the fabric when the greens were cut is now face-up when cutting the blues. This results in the long edge of each blue triangle being on top on the right side but on the bottom on the left. Other than that, everything else was done the same.
12 years later, I can finally cross this one off my list!
