Putting It Together: Assembling the Zigzag–or Streak of Lightning–Set (Part 2)

Unknown, quilter. Variable Star. 1870. From Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives, The Heritage Quilt Project of New Jersey, Inc.. Published in The Quilt Index, http://www.quiltindex.org/basicdisplay.php?kid=4A-7F-31F. Accessed: 04/15/2013.

As I promised in my Tuesday post, today I’ll show you how easy it is to assemble the rows for the zigzag (or streak of lightning) set. A couple of things to keep in mind before you begin:

You can make either an odd or even number of rows for this set. I typically prefer an odd number, but I’ve been known to make an exception.

To stabilize the rows–that is, to avoid stretching and distorting as you stitch and press them–you’ll want the straight-grain edges of the setting triangles to fall on the row’s outer edges. For this reason, you’ll use quarter-square triangles to fill in the side, top, and bottom edges of the even-numbered rows, and also to fill in the side edges of the odd-numbered rows.

You’ll use half-square triangles to fill in the top and bottom edges of the odd-numbered rows.