Sweet Blocks - A Little Bit of Progress

Been a pretty packed few days but I found a little bit of time to do some piecing and pressing for Sweet Blocks.  For the four corners I decided to press to the side of the triangles.


Thought this will give the center of the block some uninterrupted space - no lines, no bulkiness from the seams.

A view from the top:

I don't think it shows up so well in the picture, but in person the center of the block is very smooth while the seam is pressed to the side of the triangle.  I usually press the seams open for quilt tops but I thought pressing to one side would be better for the block.

Stacked and ready for sashing.

Did I mention how much I love the look of neatly stacked ... anything??

For the sashing I went with Moda solid white.  It'll be a nice contrast to the blocks :).  Here's another pretty stack with part 1 of the sashing pinned.



Pins :).  Beautiful.  I enjoy this process.  

This is the stage where I left off - pressing part 1 of the sashing.  Going to the pressed open seams for pressing all the sashing. 
 

Hoping I could sneak in some time to finish the piecing of the top and bottom of this quilt.  Here's the wishing :).

Back to the Machine - FINALLY!

It's been quite a while since I get to sit down at my sewing machine to get some work done.  In a previous blog I previewed the next quilt I'm working on "Modded".  I had the pieces cut for a couple of weeks now and it's been just sitting on my sewing table.  At last, I sat down today, pieced and pressed after I got off work from my 'day job'.

Here's the basic design of the quilt.

Blocks of 5x7 with a border around and binding. This design is for a lap size quilt about 47"x60" completed.


Each of the box was pieced together in 5 block strips.  Make sure that each strip alternates block colors.

Pictured is one of the strips of 5 blocks.  

Make sure you iron after each seam is made.  If you don't it'll be difficult to do so later on.  Diligent pressing creates flat surfaces for the quilt top.  Take special care of making sure all the joining seams are pressed carefully.  Here's a close-up of seams being pressed opened.

I press seams open for most of my quilts.  It creates a very clean, flat surface to quilt on.  I also adjust my stitch spacing to be closer when I do this - I use sittings 2 on my Juki.  Notice the nice perpendicular joints - very flat and pressed down very well.  Remember to press each seam after sewing.


After the 7 strips of 5 blocks are complete, I lay out all the strips to make sure everything was lined up properly - hahaha and to make sure I didn't forget any pieces :P.

Tried my best to take a picture of all the strips lined up - but didn't have the room in my hallway :(.  But you could get a good feel of the how the quilt time should look at by point. 5 blocks across, 7 blocks down, 35 blocks TOTAL.

Next?  Lining up the inner border all around the blocks.  I use the same green/olive fabric as I used for the blocks for the inner border.  I'm not quite sure how this will work out.  I first gut was to go with a different fabric for this step, but I really like the fabric and wanted to use it more than just in the blocks.  Well here's the guest and check :P.

The inner border all cut, sewed, pressed, and ready to be added around the blocks.  This is pretty much all I had time to do this evening.  Not bad progress - I THINK.

Next up? Adding up the inner border, creating the quilt backing, quilt sandwich, quilt, binding.... Lots to do to get a quilt ready.

Something I don’t Like – Ironing/Pressing

Last time I wrote about something I really liked about quilting, well this time I’m going to write about something I don’t know – ironing or pressing.


Why I don’t like it? Or could I even say I HATE it? I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s see –

• The inconvenience of having an ironing board and iron around. My sewing room is small enough as it is without having the ironing table area setup. Maybe I just need a bigger room but it’s totally not a pleasant experience having to iron right now.

• The heat of the iron on a hot day. Where I live it gets pretty hot in the summer and with an old AC unit that is chugging along on its last legs, it is not pleasant. On days when I do have a lot of pressing to do, I try to do this in the morning or late at night – trying to avoid the (even hotter) room. I think last summer I house got over 90 degrees inside – and that’s WITH the AC running!

• The fear of burning my fingers or my kids. I don’t like to get near the pressing stage of projects when my kids are around. It’s just too risky. I usually wait till they’re napping, sleeping, or completely placated with toys and/or TV.

• I just don’t like ironing. Even outside of ironing/pressing sewing projects, I don’t like ironing. I wait until the basket for ‘clothes that needs ironing’ gets completely full before touching it.

But as much I hate pressing I love the results of it. There’s no way around the advantages of a meticulously pressed quilt top :

• It’s easier to piece together blocks that are pressed. I like to press each sewn edge right after its sewn. I try sometimes to skip this process and wait till I get a bunch of edges sewn on a block, but this makes it harder to press since you have several edges together.

• It makes the quilt top completely flat if pressed properly. It makes all the patches/blocks act like one flat fabric, thus making it flat. This is great when sandwiching your quilt together.

• Whether you’re press your seams open (like me) or to one side, it is always good to press them in place before piecing together sewn pieces. You don’t want to be fussing around with holding the seams in place when at the sewing machine – it’s just a bad idea. Take the time and press seams in place before going to the machine.

Here’s a picture of my next quilt during one of the ironing sessions.


Note that if your seams are parallel you could wait till you have all your parallel seams – as long as you don’t have perpendicular ones – sewn to do the ironing.

I press the seams open with my finger tips just prior to applying the iron.



Finger pressing the seam open just before the iron presses it down. I usually press my seams open unless I really need to press it to one side - like working with a thicker material next to a thin one like in the case of the Baby Rose quilt, and maybe fabrics that are very sheer that you don't want to see on the underside.

Haha, here’s my older son letting me know that it’s time to stop ironing and time to start playing :).

Don’t worry, the iron was put away and turned off by the time this picture was taken :P. I use a regular ironing board for smaller projects. When the quilt gets too big I use lay towels on the floor to 
act as a giant ironing table.


So there you have it – something I HATE about quilting – the need to iron/press. Very good for the quilt but not good for me.