Coming Together!

The worst part of quilting?  Top construction!

I love making the blocks - each and every one.

Choosing fabrics to play together, cutting, sewing, pressing, sewing some more.  I love everything about this whole process.

And then the real work comes...there are many ways to sew a quilt top together.

If the blocks are simple enough I can web the whole top in continuous rows where rows are held together by chaining threads between the blocks.  Easy Peasy.

Sometimes I will join the blocks into big four-patches and then join those to complete bigger sections only having to deal with a couple of long seams.

And that is what I did here, making roughly two "halves" even if one half is bigger than the other it still keeps things a bit more balanced when sewing long seams.

My least favorite job?

Pinning points!

If you struggle with this too, here are some helpful hints.

First off, if you look at my pressing, I already solved half of the problem by pressing the first seam on my flying geese under toward the large triangle.  That helps seams oppose when geese tip meets geese tip.

I take my first pin and point match, running the anchor pin through both points to be matched.

With that anchor pin holding my points together, I take a second pin and do a quick in-and-out above the anchor pin to hold things right where they need to stay.

Without the anchor pin, an in-and-out pinning by itself may shift things.

Because we all know that SHIFT HAPPENS!  (And yes, there is a seam ripper for that!)

I try my best to not run over pins.  I've broken needles running over pins.  I will stop right at the pin, pull the pin and continue on.

I do not pin ALL machine seams.  The next seams I get to are pressed to nest and are straight forward, no points.

I tend to only pin when point needs to match point.

Pretty dang good!

Taking a victory lap!

This quilt doesn't have or need borders.  So I do some stay stitching around the outside edge of the top with the quilt top face down on my machine bed so I can manage which way these seams need to go.

This keeps seams from popping open during the quilting process and will minimize any stretch that can happen.

Click to Play:

Do all points match perfectly?  Nope!

But it's good enough for me!

Next Up?
Piecing a backing.
Yesterday I hit up the "garage stash" where I had relegated weird fabrics I didn't know how to categorize or use.
The fabric is perfectly fine, stored in bug-free-rodent-free tubs with locking tops.  The garage is climate controlled with a split unit.  There just isn't room for EVERYTHING in the QPO studio, so some things I am not into often still live in the garage.
And then there are the bins of recycled shirts in the cellar at the inn...but we are not discussing THAT right now!
I believe I have pulled enough weird pink-to-orange-ish big prints that I can assemble an interesting (!!!) backing for this one.
So much fabric, so little time.....to make it GO AWAY!
Today? We are headed to our friend's house for a taco salad bar and games, including Mexican Train and Corn Hole.  It should be very low key, just the way we want it.
The quilt backing construction can happen tomorrow.

Quiltville Quote of the Day -
I feel like there is no better time to post this than today.