Greetings Sweater Weather-ers and welcome to week two of our Sweater Weather Quilt Along! If you’ve missed any of the other posts in this series, you can find over on our Quilt Along Home Page – scroll to the bottom to see the links!
Week 02 Agenda:
Mini Project:
- Blocks 1 + 2
Full Project:
- Strip-Pieced Block 1, if you didn’t finish these last week
- Blocks 11 + 12
It’s always fun to sit down at your sewing machine with a brand new project … which is exactly what we are doing right now!
Yesterday, which I was giving a lecture with the Peninsula Quilt Guild, near San Franscisco, CA, I was sharing some of my favorite quilt patterns and found myself saying over and over again, “Yes! This looks complicated and intricate … but this quilt is really just made out of smaller building blocks, which are shapes that you are already super familiar with!” And that’s exactly what we’re doing here, this week! We are starting with very basic little building blocks that will be the foundation of our larger flower block.
Some Tips for the week …
- Line up your seam intersections and pin them in place before sewing.
- Sew carefully and precisely – you’ll be setting your future self up for success as we start putting these smaller building blocks together into larger building blocks!
- Press carefully – and with this project I’m suggesting that you press your seams open! This is where those wooly felted pressing mats really come in handy!
- Switch to a shorter stitch length, if your building blocks are coming unravelled a bit.
- Make sure your blocks are finishing at the correct size! They should be 2.5″ x 2.5 unfinished! If they’re not – check your cutting, check your seam allowances, check your pressing … and fix any problems before making the rest of your blocks. Again, your future self will thank you!
That’s it for this week – see you next week with some more building blocks! If you’re still working on your strip-pieced building blocks (full-sized quilt only), make sure you finish putting together Block 2, for next week, too.
