Sunday, October 12, 2008

A-1


Difficulty of block: medium
Number of pieces: 28
Method used: hand piecing

I rated this one as medium difficulty, but did find it easy. The tricky part was at the converging seams. You had to be careful not to leave a hole in the center. The solution for this is to "circle the intersection," as described in Linda Franz's book, Quilted Diamonds. This is when you pass the needle around through all of the converging seam allowances before finishing the last section of the seam.

Seams on a hand pieced block are very different then on a machine pieced block. Does anybody have an tips for pressing a hand pieced block, such as this, with over thirty (tiny) seams?

Until next week...happy quilting!


Karen



P.S. Please be sure to visit my main blog, Journey of a Quilter.

5 comments:

Dresden Plate said...

Thanks for your visit!
Pressing a block like that is not easy, do you have a tiny iron with just a very small point, especially for quilters?

Miri said...

When pressing a hand pieced block, you should be able to fan the seam allowances around at each intersection since they aren't sewn across each other. The idea is that you will have less bulk. I never could get all the seam intersections to do it-I hand pieced when I first began quilting.

Christina said...

I would press as you go.

Robin said...

Wow! What a block to start with. This one was not terribly difficult, but dealing with all those seams and points makes it a little more challenging. Yours looks lovely!

I'm also handpiecing my Dear Jane blocks. I usually finger press as I go and then take larger chunks to the iron and finally give it a good press at the end. Mostly, I try to stay with the seams to the dark. But fingerpressing allows me a bit more freedom to change my mind on a seam's direction partway through if I need to.

Minka said...

I love your fabrics, as usual! For hand piecing, you have the option to fan the seam allowances as one of your other commmenters described.

I'm working on this block...trying to decide if I will redraft it or not. This is a case of Jane and Brenda's blocks not matching completely. I'm curious if you considered redrafting this one as I know you have that list of Opps Blocks...which inspired a similar list on my blog. See "Follow Jane Folow Brenda" at http://minkasstudio.blogspot.com/p/dear-jane.html

To see what other projects I am working on, visit me at Journey of a Quilter.