Meeting 3 - Piecing Your Quilt Top, Part 2

Well, hi!

Sorry to have dropped off the face of the planet, but this happened: 

We have HOW MANY days to move?!?!?

No, we didn't sell the children (but contact us with any offers!).  We sold our house!  And we got 27 days to pack, secure temporary housing, and get the heck out.  So far, so good.  We've got an apartment for three months, we have an accepted offer in on a house, and we're waiting for inspection and appraisal to finish up so we can close in mid-September.  All of that meant I had ZERO time to do anything but pack, pack, pack, and pack.  And move.  And pack.  :)

But now we're settling in, and I have a corner of the living room, and I can sew again!  Yay!

So...  where were we?  Oh, yeah, you'd just made 16 (or 24) four-square blocks.  Nifty, aren't they?

Here comes one of my favorite parts:  layout options.  With blocks like these (and lots and lots and lots of other blocks), you can shuffle them around to get different looks.  I tried out three:

Randomized - wherever they fell, they stayed

All laid out in rows

Four squares of four squares

I opted to go with the four squares squared.  I just liked it.  I realized when I saw the photos, though, that my paws print is rather directional, and I didn't do very well keeping things lined up the same way during piecing.  I don't care.  I actually kinda like that it's wonky.  :)

Now that you've laid things out to your satisfaction, do me a favor.  Take a picture of it.  You'll thank me later when you can't remember how the silly thing is supposed to look.

When it comes to putting your blocks together, I have a personal preference of keeping things 'even'.  It might be my not-so-inner math geek coming out, but I like sewing even layers together.  So, for this 4x4 quilt, I wouldn't sew two, add one on the end, and then add the last one to the end of that.  I'd make two sets of two and sew them together.  Much easier to handle.  Same with joining the rows - I'd join the first two and the second two, then put those together.

Can I be perfectly honest with you?  Sure I can.  Okay, here's a little secret - just between us.  I don't follow the 'rules' very often.  I do it MY way.  And for this particular layout, I'd just make bigger four-patch blocks out of the four four-patches of each print and then make one more giant four-patch for the whole top.  But I'll show you the 'traditional' way of assembling a quilt top anyway.  You really should do whatever's comfortable and manageable for YOU.  Quiltmaking should be fun - not stodgy and boring.  Here goes...

Two rows of my quilt

Flippin' out!

Flip the pieces in row 2 over the pieces in row 1, meeting the edges where they'll join.  Match the seams and pin them!

Pin it - pin it real good...

Keep your sets in orderly piles - one of rows 1/2 and one of rows 3/4 (and 5/6, and 7/8, etc.).  Chain-piece these, snip them apart, and press the seams open.  Lay everything out again to make sure you've got what you're after (which I actually like to do before I press them, just in case), then finish making your rows by joining the row 1/2 set to the row 3/4 set.  You'll have a bunch of rows now.  Lay those out again, until you've got it the way you want it, and start joining two rows at a time - just like you did the columns.  Make 2-part sets and try to keep things even - if you have eight rows, make four 2-part sets, then make two 4-part sets out of those, then make one 8-part set.  I hope that makes some amount of sense.

Keep pinning every seam join.  When you get to joining the rows, it's going to take quite a few pins.  It's totally worth it for those points to match up!

Annnnnnnd... that's it.  You've now made a quilt top.  Congratulations!

Next week (I hope it's next week), we'll start prepping our top for quilting.  You'll need your batting, your top, your backing fabric all nicely pressed, and safety pins.  Lots of safety pins.  You can use straight pins if you want to, but you'll need something to cap them or you're going to use a lot of Band-Aids.  Make it easy on yourself and get some size 1 quilter's safety pins.  :)

Because I'm so far behind, and missed multiple weeks (again, I'm sorry), I'll probably combine the next two weeks' instruction into one.  We'll prep the top for quilting and start actually quilting it.  Break out that walking foot!

Happy top-finishing!
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