Lucille Learns to Quilt

I'm putting blocks together now for this quilt, and things are becoming apparent. Don't things start to make sense, a few steps after you needed to know?

This quilt had rectangles with little triangles on one end. You do this by marking a square with a diagonal line from corner to corner and sewing along that line at the end of the rectangle. Then you trim off the extra bits and press. Voila!

But you are marking a line along the bias. It pulls and stretches as you mark. You are sewing on the bias. It pulls and stretches as you sew. I used Jelly Rolls. These are rolls of 2 1/2" strips that are pre-cut to make your life easier. They are cut with a pinked edge. The pinking does not seem to be part of the 2 1/2" measurement. Therefore you don't count that as you look for where to draw that diagonal line.

Do you see the potential here for errors?

Then when you join seamed pieces to make blocks it works better of those seams are pressed in opposite directions. Then they can but up against each other and you get a lovely match - with the help of my favourite forked pins, of course. I didn't realize this until about 500 seams too late. This isn't a fatal problem, but again, potential for error. Look here where the little triangles meet. I was fine for the centre match but not for the side matches. Those seams had to go with seams in the same direction and not butting. This, combined with bias issues led to less than ideal situations.

 Bubbling is not intentional, nor is it desirable. The long arm quilting lady will sigh when she quilts this part.

Here you see that I wasn't always great with my diagonal line drawing and sewing.  That top triangle ends below the 1/4" seam, methinks.

Now here was a discovery! The Great P introduced me to a better 1/4" foot! My old foot on the right was fine, but my new foot on the left has a little metal edge that lines up fabric much better, and does so before it hits the needle. Love it!

These are the bits left over from all those triangles. It's a bag full of cute I should throw out, but probably won't be able to for a bit. Letting go take time.

Now these clippers are what I use as seam rippers. I like them just fine. They slip in between stitches nicely and don't stab holes anywhere.  Lee Valley doesn't carry them anymore, but I think there were $4 for a pack of 10.

In my hunt for the perfect machine must haves, I noted this. My new CV has this feature where the pressure foot drops into place when you touch the foot pedal. Love it! One less thing to do when you are sewing small bits. You can hold onto the fabric and drop the foot down to hold it in place without letting it go. Now I believe I also have a knee lever that will lift the foot for me. I may have to try that out too.