Shine on Sampler-Month 9

March 07, 2021

Bonnie and Camille Quilt Bee

Written by Brenda

It’s a week of fast and easy sewing to make our blocks. Both blocks are primarily constructed of squares and the instructions use strip piecing to make the subunits. I’m a big fan of strip piecing. It is fast and efficient and tends to be an accurate way to piece your blocks. I especially like how the strips in these blocks are cut a little longer than you need to let you square up the end before you start cutting your units.

Now one thing that you will notice throughout this book is that whenever the print with the white squares and flowers is featured in a block, it is absolutely centered in the photographs. It makes sense and if I were making this for a book, I’d probably try to do the same thing. For some of my first blocks, I did try to get them centered and that was fine.

Now, if you are following the directions and cutting your units from strips, centering those squares will be a lot more difficult. When fabric is printed, it isn’t always printed straight on the grain. Another factor to consider is that even woven fabric can have some stretch to it and the process of folding and then wrapping it on the bolt board can cause the line of a print to go off at an angle. In the photo above, you can see how the flowers in squares on the green fabric are fairly straight but that changes after the fold line.

Things like directional prints and lines in fabrics may have bothered me in the past, but I don’t tend to worry about them now. As you are making your quilts, you are so close to every element and you will notice every tiny little thing that most people will never see when they look at your whole quilt.

To get each one of those flowers centered, you will have to fussy cut each one of the squares with the flowers and cut them as squares rather than using the strip piecing. It takes a little bit more time, but it’s not hard to do. Truth be told, there was a time in my life when I would have done just that. Honestly, right now, something like that just isn’t important to me. But I want to make sure you know that if it is something that will bother you every time you look at the quilt, please take the time to fussy cut. You are probably the kind of person that is going to make sure that all of the rainbows are going the same directions and that’s okay. You do you! Happy sewing!