Trying out the Twister

Last spring, I bought the “Lil Twister” at a quilt show.  I’m always a sucker for new notions, and this one looked like fun.
 Around the same time, I won a charm square pack from AJ at I Knit n Quilt 2.  It was Martinique, by 3 Sisters.  Beautiful, soft browns, greens and pinks.
I finally tried out the Twister on these charm square fabrics.
First, I sewed all the charms together

Next, I had to pick a border fabric.  For some reason, I have lots in my stash to choose from!

Here is the Twister template.  It has lines on it, set on the diagonal.  You place these lines on the seam lines of your patches, and cut around the template.

Then, you lay out the newly cut pieces in exactly the same order that they were in as you cut them out.  Voila – twisted blocks!

As your border has become part of the twisted blocks, you need to add on another border.  Here it is unquilted

I decided to quilt it in diagonal, parallel lines.  The lines are about an inch apart.

You can’t see the binding very well, but I found a soft green stripe in my stash that worked well.

It finished up at about 30 x 33 inches.  Just a nice size for a table topper.
The Twister does leave a lot of fabric behind.  Being the thrifty person that I am, noticed that the pieces left included 42 squares about 2 1/2 inches in size.  I cut them down to 2 inch and added them to my leaders and enders.  Yes, they are cut on the bias, but I figure that they will end up sewn to lots of other pieces, so the bias won’t have any harmful effect.