It was time to start sewing!
Time for the design wall and
block placement
I then started to place these on my
design wall (a fancy word for that flannel
table cloth taped to the wall).
Beside each 6" strip I placed two of the 4"
blocks. This really is going to be a rather
scrappy yet coordinated quilt so I didn’t
spend a lot of time doing this. I did try to
have one dark, one light and one medium piece of fabric in each block.
I made 5 of these blocks across.
In row two I switched the blocks around
starting with the two 4" pieces and then
the 6" piece. There are a total of 6 rows
of 5 blocks for a total of 30 blocks — Yes
I had some left overs from my layer cake
I could have made the quilt bigger but I
wanted a ‘sofa’ quilt, one for her to cuddle
up on the sofa and sip tea and watch a
movie so by the time I added a couple of
borders this was going to be big enough.
Shortening my Stitch Length to 2.0
That done, I get my ¼” foot out that
came with my machine and get to
sewing. I'm a chain 'piecer' so I went to
my design wall and took down all my
pairs of 4" x 5" squares and sewed them
all together using a ¼" seam. To end up
with a 4" x 9½" pair.
I then took each pair and sewed them
to the long side of my 6” x 10” piece of
fabric. And no — they didn’t fit exactly,
my 4” x 5” pieces which were sewn into
pairs now measured 4" x 9½". I still sewed
them to the 10” piece of fabric as I was
going to square them up after the next
pressing.
Once all of my blocks were together I set
out to square them all up to a nice 9½"
square.
Time to square up! 9 1/2 X 9 1/2
I sewed those squares together to make
rows, pressing each seam open.
I love my 1/4" foot--included with my
PFAFF Quilt Ambition 2.0!
Once they were all sewn together in pairs
I went to the ironing board. First I set the
seam then proceeded to iron that seam
open. Yep, you read that right - open!
Then sewed the rows together. The
whole quilt top to this point was cut,
pieced and pressed and assembled in a
day (not a long day just a good steady
day, where I managed to cook dinner
and read a couple of chapters of a book I
just can’t seem to put down).
Next…borders. I'm thinking red, for pop!
My design wall...all laid out and ready to go
First thing I did was wind a nice fresh
bobbin on my PFAFF Quilt Ambition 2.0
sewing machine.
Then I shortened my stitch length. The
default stitch length setting on this
machine is 2.5. I shortened it to 2.0. I like
a shorter stitch length when I'm piecing.
The 2.5 stitch length works great for sewing garments with wider seam allowances but I like that shorter stitch length for
my ¼” seams. It's so easy to change the
stitch length on this machine that there
is really no excuse for me not to.
Pressing the seam OPEN
I started pressing almost all of my
quilting seams open. It makes for a flatter
and I think cleaner press and makes free
motion quilting or even stitch in the
ditch quilting a piece of cake!
Photos by Gail Berry-Graham.
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