My Secret Garden Quilt Along with Joy - Block 1

Sunday afternoons mean lazy naps for some, football for others and for me it means cutting time.  I am usually rested and ready to set up my weeks sewing projects. At the end of a work day it’s easy peasy to sew a few seams here and there and by the end of the week I am ready for another Sunday afternoon cutting session.

Marking Units

Pencils tend to be elusive critters in my house….they are a bit shy and when found they are stubby without an eraser. Therefore, the rotary cutter is my preferred tool in my sewing studio. Instead of drawing a line from corner to corner I used Doug Leko’s Simple Folded  Corner Ruler and a rotary cutter.

Doug’s ruler is easy to use….simply line up the solid line on the diagonal and square up the fabrics with the dotted lines that match the square or rectangle measurement.  When the fabrics are stacked and cut together, the fibers mesh together nicely and are ready to sew. No need to hunt down a pencil and a sharpener.

For safe cutting practices the unit needs to be rotated.  Before cutting, make sure that the color placement is correct. After sewing the navy piece,  I finger pressed the seam rather than using an iron. Without the heat of the iron the seams are less likely to distort.

The process is repeated with the second fabric.  Once the goose unit is created, attach the background squares on the ends of the top and bottom units.

Since the pencil is still missing…...I stacked all of my pairs of squares and simply cut them on the diagonal and sewed them as individual half square triangles.

All of my completed half square triangles were finger pressed toward the darker fabric choice.  For a crisper seam you can use a wooden stiletto.

Center Layout….the key is getting the navy and background half square triangles to complete the star shape…

Last check before assembly….make sure your colors create star points.

I pressed the center section but did not press the top and bottom rows of the small half square triangles.  Not pressing allows me to choose which direction the seams need to lay to nest.

(Visitors checking to make sure my lay out was correct.)

For alignment purposes, I pierced a single pin through the goose intersection and aligned the tip of the pin with the seam underneath.

The pin will be removed as I sew but serves as a pivot point to align the top and bottom edges as I sew and a reminder of where the center seams need to match.

Sew just a teeny, tiny hair to the right of the intersecting threads.  This gives the bulk of the seam a little room to press flat and creates perfect intersections.

Create 2 matching blocks and Block #1 is complete!

Until next time, Happy Sewing!

Joy

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