BLOG 149

During the last 3 weeks, I have continued to create diamond blocks, enjoying the process of slamming fabric under the needle and sewing at motorway speed. It has been a relatively mindless process thus allowing me to think thoughts (usually rubbish) or to listen to the radio or to just sew. The process of string piecing as it is called, certainly hasn’t been hard with no seams to match and random fabrics used. Now I’m not a numbers person really and the last thing I would be caught doing is to count how many pieces of fabric are in a quilt or how many miles of thread I have sewn. This doesn’t interest me and, if I knew this information in advance, I would probably never start a quilt. Suffice it to say that it took me about 1 hour to create a diamond block.

I am going to start to sew the blocks together now to make the rows and then join the rows to create the quilt top. I need to see what it is going to look like, how big it needs to be and whether I am going to add a border.

The horizontal seams that were sewn onto paper and ironed as I went along are well established. Remember that I am a ‘butter-upper’ of seams and so I will contrive to make the seams that join the blocks together go the way I want them to go.

 CREATING THE QUILT TOP

Join one diamond to another diamond, paying special attention to the corners of the diamonds. (Don’t you love to robin peeping from the fabric!)

 

 

                            Diamond to diamond

  Join four diamonds together to make a horizontal row and press them lightly on the WS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                       Press on the WS

When seen on the WS, all seams should lie flat and tidily.

 

                                    WS seam allowances

Every time you add another block, check to see that there are no duplicated fabrics next door to one another.

  

 

                                                       2 rows

Having joined 5 rows of 4 diamonds together, I decided to put it on a single bed to check for length only to discover that it was way too long!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                          Trial fitting

 

I like the effect of it very much though and was anxious to try it on the bed it is destined for. This again confirmed that it was too long and so some reverse sewing … or unpicking by any other name … followed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                          Double bed

That’s the stage it is at the moment and I have put it to one side until I get back from Barcelona. We are just having 3 nights away to enjoy a city break.  Can’t wait!