Thursday, December 19, 2013

Progress!

My last session in the sewing room was quite frustrating.  I tried to sew the same seam five times.  Pieces were in the wrong order or were sewn to the wrong edge of the fabric (not hard if the fabric is around 6 inches square and one side is 1/8 of an inch longer than the other), or the seam wasn't straight, or whatever.

Tonight was much different!  First, I sewed that seam correctly.  A while ago, I realized that I could make life easier if I planned my piecing to minimize the number of Y seams I needed.  So, I sewed a second set of three patches together.  That brought the only frustration of the evening, as the result was a 16th of an inch or so too short.  I figured that my problem was the difference between a 1/4-inch seam and a scant 1/4-inch seam.  So, I cut out a fresh set of those pieces and put them together, making sure that the edges of the fabric were just barely not touching the guide on the #57 foot.  This time, the piece was just a shade too long, so I trimmed it down.  Then I added a fourth piece to the top, just a plain straight seam.  Finally, I was ready to try my first challenging assembly.  The seam I needed ran fr

om the top down about three inches, and then left 1/2 inch, and then down the rest of the way (maybe two inches).  I sewed the two vertical pieces first, being careful to leave the required seam allowance at the ends, and then I folded the fabric to the last little half-inch seam and sewed that.  And it worked!  Everything is aligned, the sizes are right, the edges are square, and there's no puckering in the corners.  The only problem I saw was a little bit of puckering along one long seam.  I'm not sure what causes that.  Maybe I wasn't letting the fabric move freely enough for that seam.  

So, now I have the top half of one medium-sized square finished!

I'm planning to make this a complete mini-quilt.  I'll quilt it and bind it.  The only problem is that it's not sized for binding, so the binding will take away from the squareness of the outer squares.


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