Cleopatra's Fan Test Block Completed: Construction + Pressing Plan

Remember this blog post from mid-March, when I was contemplating whether or not to make a Cleopatra's Fan quilt?  You can catch up here if you missed that one.  I decided to make a test block with my AccuQuilt GO! 12" Cleopatra's Fan BOB (Block On Board) die cutter (this post contains affiliate links) and, although this was fiddly and slow-going to piece, I like how it turned out.  I was unsure about the large 12" block scale initially, but I really like it paired with large scale print fabrics like this scrap of older OOP (out of print) Kaffe Fassett floral.  Isn't this fun?

12 inch Cleopatra's Fan Test Block Completed

First, my thoughts on cutting the fabric patches out with the AccuQuilt die, because as I explained in my earlier post, there are multiple different options for cutting out this block.  Due to the orientation of the fabric shapes on the BOB die, I needed strips of each fabric cut PARALLEL to my selvages, which caused me to mess up and miscut the violet fabric I originally planned to use in place of the green solid.  I was on autopilot, selvages together, then selvages to the fold and cut off a slice, but that would have resulted in feeding the slightly stretchy crosswise grain through the die cutter, and my patches from that color would likely have stretched during cutting and come out slightly too small in one direction.  Following AccuQuilt's directions about fabric grain really does make a difference, I've found.  The other thing I knew I would need to do was to heavily starch that flimsy, filmy Kaffe Fassett print fabric before feeding it through the cutting machine.  Even with the grain oriented correctly, that fabric still was unlikely to behave without being starched with old school Niagara Spray Starch Plus.  These days I'm more likely to be using   for pressing seams as they're sewn and for pressing finished blocks, but nothing beats the real starch like Grandma used when it comes to a slippery fabric that doesn't cooperate.

Rear View: The Pressing Plan

The PDF instructions for assembling the Cleopatra's Fan block don't say anything about how the seams should be pressed.  I did my online research and found a few different tutorials, but in addition to reading them I scrutinized the accompanying photos.  Lots of people are saying to just press ALL the seams open with this block -- and lots of those tutorials show photos of finished blocks with misaligned seam intersections and wavy stretched fabric edges.  

Hooray! My Halo Quilt is Finished!

 YOU GUYS!!!  Today is August 20th, and I finished my first quilt of the year yesterday.  I keep looking out my window for the parade but they must be stuck in traffic somewhere...  Surely there will be fireworks, or at least I'll get a mention on the news tonight???  😐. Seriously -- does anyone else feel a little anticlimactic about finally finishing a quilt, or is it just me?  So much work and effort, and then it's just OVER.  It feels so abrupt!

My 66 x 66 Halo Quilt Finish, Pattern by Jen Kingwell

I started this project in mid-March, so it took me five months from start to finish to cut, piece, quilt, label, and bind it.  The pattern for this quilt is available in Jen Kingwell's Jenny From One Block pattern booklet and there's a set of acrylic templates for the Halo quilt sold separately that are worth their weight in gold.  The curved patches for Halo can be cut with a 28 mm rotary cutter (a larger diameter blade is too big to follow the curves, but a smaller diameter blade is too shallow to glide along the edge of the acrylic templates -- the screw holding the blade in place would get in the way).  The other product I highly recommend for this project is Odif Grippy, a spray-on translucent nonslip coating for the acrylic templates that greatly reduces their tendency to slide on the fabric when you need them to stay put for accurate cuts (this post contains affiliate links).  

Halo is suitable for either hand or machine piecing; I hand pieced just one block just to see if I liked it better than machine piecing.  The verdict?  Hand piecing these blocks is easier but slower than doing it by machine, and I wanted to get this done as quickly as possible so I opted for machine piecing the rest of the blocks.  I used lots of Karen Kay Buckley's Shorter Perfect Pins to machine piece all of those curves.

Halo Pattern Booklet, Halo Templates and Tilda Pie In the Sky Fat Eighths

The Tilda Pie in the Sky fabrics pictured above were my starting point for this quilt, but I pulled lots and lots of fabrics from my stash, from my scrap bins (and from the treasure trove of scraps sent to me by Nann!).  What most intrigued me about Jen Kingwell's original version of this quilt was the way her quilt initially seems "random scrappy," but carefully planned elements reveal themselves on closer inspection (Most blocks are scrappy, but several blocks are planned.  Several blocks are planned to create an entire matching circle with a matching ring where the corners come together, and several other blocks are planned to create a scrappy circle with a solid matching ring).  She set general guidelines for value placement within her blocks (such as generally using darker/higher contrast fabrics for the rings and lighter value/lower contrast fabrics for background patches), but then only followed those "rules" about 60-70% of the time.  This resulted in a really interesting effect where some rings, circles and squares come forward visually in the composition and others appear to recede.  I attempted to recreate these "special effects" in my own version of the quilt and I'm pleased with how that turned out.

Nann's Scrappy Largesse, Halo Quilt Progress + A Mini Curved Piecing Tutorial

I don't know about you, but when I've been slogging along forever on a project, trying to combine the same old scraps from my scrap bins in new ways to create blocks that don't look exactly like all the others on my design wall, there's nothing like a fresh injection of someone else's scraps to make the work feel fresh and exciting again.  

A month or so ago, Nann who blogs at With Strings Attached mentioned to me that she'd just finished reading a 1932 novel called The Sheltered Life by Ellen Glasgow.  When I expressed interest in reading the book, she offered to mail me her copy -- and she stuffed the flat rate postage box full of fabric scraps!!  I felt like I'd hit the scrappy jackpot!  I've been working in as many of Nann's scraps as possible and having a grand time with it.  Don't you love this sweet Wizard of Oz fabric?  The orange and blue arcs, pink quarter circle, blue and white dot, larger blue floral quarter circle, and the pink mini floral print are all Nann's fabrics in the block below.

This Block Contains 5 Scraps from Nann

In the block below, the yellow floral HSTs surrounding the blue center square are definitely Nann's, and I think that curved tumbler patch at the bottom that has sprigs of yellow flowers on a white background might also be from Nann.

Yellow Floral Print HSTs are Also Scraps from Nann

Although I've been busy long arm quilting this month, I've also had more social sewing opportunities on my calendar lately and that has really helped me keep the momentum going with this project.  Below you can see I have my Jen Kingwell Block Wrap all packed up with six different blocks planned out, ready to piece at a recent guild Sit & Sew event (this post contains affiliate links).  

Halo Quilt Value Study: Making a Messy Start

Happy Weekend, quilters!  I have an itty bitty amount of progress on my new Halo quilt to share with you today.  For those who missed my earlier post about this NewFO project, Halo is a Jen Kingwell pattern that can be found in her Jenny From One Block pattern booklet, available on Amazon here (this post contains affiliate links).

Unsewn Halo Blocks On My Design Wall

For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on cutting out shapes and rearranging them on my design wall without any sewing.  When I searched #haloquilt on Instagram, I found lots of different versions of this quilt, in all kinds of colorways.  What struck me immediately was that it's the muddled values in Jen Kingwell's original version that drew me in, the way that her "halo rings" appear to come forward in some places and recede in others, creating an illusion of depth.  Other quilters have made some very striking and modern versions of this quilt by increasing the value contrast, limiting the color palette, or restricting themselves to solids, but I was really intrigued by the way Jen broke the conventional "quilt police" rules about value and contrast in her quilt, creating something that feels fresh and modern but also somehow nostalgic and vintage.  I want to recreate that in my version of the quilt.

Jen Kingwell's 66 x 66 Halo Quilt

I printed a full page, grayscale photo of Jen's quilt and taped it up above my cutting table so I can refer to it as I'm chopping up my fabric pieces:

Grayscale Photo of Jen Kingwell's Halo Quilt

It's so much easier to see what's going on with value when you take color out of the equation!  

Of Butterflies for Modern Baby Clam Shells, a Veteran's Quilt, + Pantograph Patterns

 Good morning and happy Labor Day weekend to readers in the United States!  I am DELIGHTED to share that I finally finished piecing the body of my Modern Baby Clam Shells quilt top!  

I'll be adding 2" borders in the same Grunge Sky background fabric later today.  For the moment, I'm just reveling in my smooth curves and the fact that this top came out so flat and so square.  

[Note to self: Machine piecing a clam shell quilt combines Y-seams with curved seams.  Definitely doable, but it was fiddly and tedious and it took me a week to piece this little baby quilt.  Next time you need a QUICK baby quilt, stick to straight seamed patterns!]

In addition to adding narrow borders to this top, there's one more step before I'm ready to quilt it.  I want to add one or more Monarch butterflies (sentimental connection for this baby's mom and grandmother).  When I was first hunting for Monarch butterfly fabric nearly two years ago, when I started this project, I didn't see any fabric prints with Monarch butterflies that had the right aesthetic for what I had in mind.  So I found this embroidery design at Urban Threads here:

This is a large design, and if I end up using it on this quilt I will probably just embroider one 7" butterfly design in the center circle of the quilt.  I played around with the design in my Bernina Designer Plus v8 embroidery software, with an imported image of my Grunge Sky background fabric so I could fine-tune the thread colors to get the look I'm envisioning.  I want this to be instantly recognizable as a Monarch.

I have the option of deleting that scroll background entirely in my embroidery software if I don't like it.  Or, if I do use the scroll background with the butterfly design, I can also copy the scroll background and use it as a background for a quilt label or a monogram.

HOWEVER...  Another option for my butterflies has presented itself this morning!  In my Bernina users' forum on Groups.io, one of the members had posted a photo of a bag project she'd recently completed.  One of the fabrics used for that bag was a butterfly print that caught my eye because I recognized a couple of Monarchs in the print AND the color palette and style of the print looked like a good match for the Moda Painted Garden layer cake prints I used in my clam shell quilt.  The maker of that bag got back to me today with the selvage information and I was able to find a yard of it for sale on eBay for $3.50.  

See what I mean?  I have to wait and at least see this fabric in person before I go ahead with machine embroidery.  I'm not sure of the scale but I think these are smaller, so I'd be appliquéing several of them onto the quilt top, probably by machine, either with a turned edge or else fused edges with a machine blanket stitch for a more "handmade" appearance.

There are pros and cons to each method.  That giant butterfly embroidery might look really cool in the center of the quilt, but I might have issues with puckering from the dense embroidery on lightweight quilting cotton fabric if I don't stabilize it adequately, hence the need for sewing out one or more test embroideries before embroidering the actual quilt top.   I may need one or more test sewouts to finalize my thread colors in real life, too, and it's not as easy to predict how the colors work together with a design like this that extensively blends several shades of orange and yellow.  The experimenting I did in my software was a good starting point, but I want to be 100% sure with a test stitch before committing to embroidering the quilt top.  It could take several tries before I have the stabilizers and thread colors just right...  And did I mention that this design has an estimated stitch time of 58 minutes, with nearly 45,000 in the design?  I could spend an entire day, or several days, just getting ready to sew this design on my quilt top before I actually stitch it out for real.  If I get too much puckering, I can go back to my software and experiment with reducing the stitch density, but I want to be sure I have enough thread coverage that the teal blue background fabric doesn't show through the embroidered design.

Then there's the question of quilting.  I had two different allover pantograph designs in mind for this quilt.  The first one is Daisies Galore from Timeless Quilting:

And the second option is Passion Vine, also from Timeless Quilting:

Now, if I've got a beautiful 7" butterfly embroidered in the center of my quilt top, I am not going to want to quilt a pantograph design right over top of the embroidery.  I think that would look bad as well as risking technical difficulties like thread breaks, skipped stitches, or even a broken needle during quilting.  So, if I embroider a giant butterfly in the middle of the quilt top, I'm going to want to finagle the pantograph in some way so that I can quilt that row AROUND my butterfly rather than THROUGH my butterfly.  

IF I had IntelliQuilter computer robotics installed on my long arm machine, I could program a No Sew Zone around my embroidered butterfly and tell the computer to quilt the edge-to-edge design all around the embroidery, without stitching over it.  But I don't have that option for now, so I'd have to be tracing the pantograph pattern from the back of my machine while peeking over at the actual quilt top to see when I'm getting close to the embroidery.  This is a dicey proposition, much like texting and driving, but I think that's what I'm going to do if I go with the embroidered design.

Whereas, if I cut out a handful of butterflies and appliqué them to my quilt top here and there, I would feel much more comfortable quilting the pantograph across the entire surface of the quilt without regard to where the appliqués are located.  

And then there's a tempting but unlikely-to-be-chosen third idea that I came across on Instagram recently.  Check out the pretty feather variations that Andrea Munro of Practical Dazzle has free motion quilted on her clam shell quilt:

That would be so much FUN, and custom quilting my clam shell quilt would make it easier to keep the quilting off any embroidery and/or appliqué.  The downside to this -- MAJOR downside -- is that it would take so much longer than an edge to edge pantograph design AND it would up the ante for the second baby quilt for the toddler's soon-to-be-born baby brother.  Remember that I want to have BOTH of these quilts finished and shipped out by next month, and the baby brother's quilt isn't even started yet.  I don't want to go overboard with the girl's quilt and then not be able to do something comparable for the baby boy.  But I just had to show you Andrea's clam shell quilt because I love it so much!

Meanwhile, as I wait for the butterfly fabric to come in the mail, I've got this veteran's hospice outreach top ready to load on my long arm frame.  It was pieced by another member of The Charlotte Quilters Guild.

I know that many quilters would pick a quilting design with stars for a top like this, but that's too predictable and matchy-matchy for my taste.  Instead, I've chosen this Flirty Bubbles pantograph because it reminds me of streamers and confetti at a military parade:

Like this photo of the Operation Welcome Home ticker tape parade, held in honor of veterans returning from Operation Desert Storm on June 10, 1991:

Well, folks, my Saturday is slipping away from me, so that's all you get for today!  I'm linking up with some of my favorite linky parties:

SATURDAY

·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY

·       Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

·       Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

        ·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

If you're a machine quilter, either domestic sit-down or a long arm on a frame, be sure to link up with us here on Tuesday for Long Arm Learning!  

Machine Piecing the Modern Baby Clam Shells Quilt, with Help from QNM

Hello, my lovelies!  My one and only weekly goal last week was to START -- just to start, not to finish, mind you! -- piecing my Modern Baby Clam Shells quilt.  I created the design in my EQ8 software in December of 2018, with a specific baby in mind whose due date was several weeks away...  Then it took me awhile to find the 9.5" acrylic clam shell templates I wanted to use (from an Australian Etsy seller who has since closed her shop).  Then I hemmed and hawed about the best way to cut out completely accurate 9.5" diameter circles (10" actually, since I needed a seam allowance).  After cutting out all the clam shells, circles, and partial clam shells, I then realized I didn't know how to sew them together!  I had my heart set on old school curved piecing, which I'd done for Lars's Drunkard's Path quilt eight years ago, but I wasn't sure how to go about piecing a clam shell quilt.  Do you start at the bottom and work your way up, or start at the top and work your way down?  Searching online, I either found instructions that confused me and explained only the part I already understood (how to sew a curved seam) and left out the part I didn't know (where to start and how to progress through the piecing of the quilt).  I also found patterns that subdivided the clam shells to simplify the piecing, or for using a prepared edge appliqué technique to avoid piecing altogether, neither of which interested me.  Ugh!  Annoying!  Set aside and ignored for a year and a half, until I made it my goal for THIS week:

So, as you can see, I've met that goal already because I did start the piecing!  Yay, me! 😉.  I'm using my Golidilocks machine for this -- my 5.5 mm Bernina 475QE, which is why I have my portable SewEzi table set up in my studio next to the big machine's cabinet.

So that's my quilt design rendering, created in EQ8 software.  It should finish at 40" x 40" unless I decide to enlarge it somehow.  There may or may not be embroidered butterflies before the top gets layered for piecing.

As you can see, I'm using a bazillion pins, because I want the smoothest, most accurate curve possible and I don't want to clip the seam allowances.  I prefer piecing with Patchwork Foot #37 on my little machine, and I bought a Bernina seam guide that I can snug right up against the side of my foot just like the seam guide that came with the #97D foot for my big 750QE machine.  Having that fence-like guide out in FRONT of the presser foot makes it so easy to to feed the curve smoothly with a deadly accurate 1/4" seam.  I'm also using my Patchwork Straight Stitch defaults (lower tension for my Aurifil 50/2 cotton thread and a shorter stitch length of 2.0).  On my 475QE it's stitch #1303, but the same exact stitch on my other Bernina is #1326 -- go figure!

Yay!  The first seam!!  As you can see, I started in the middle of my quilt.  Where should I add the next patch?  Let's put another clam shell onto the blue half circle!

Yay again!  Smooth round curves are making me happy!  This is awesome; why was I so afraid?!  Let's add a circle next!

But then I started second guessing how I was going about all of this and wondering if I was going to piece myself into some kind of a corner.  And I remembered an article I'd saved when I was going through a haul of ancient Quilters' Newsletter Magazines that a former member of the Charlotte Quilter's Guild gave me about a year ago.  (She wanted to donate them to a current member of the guild and I was the only person who raised my hand).  So I stopped piecing and (miraculously!) located the article, filed away in one of my ubiquitous 3-ring binders.

THIS!!  THIS is the information I'd been looking for, and I had to go all the way back to a March 1997 magazine to find it.  The instructions are for hand piecing, but all I really needed was that piecing diagram explaining that you start at the top, alternating between rows one and two, and then work your way down adding row by row beneath the first two.  That, the pressing direction for seam allowances, and the Fig. 6 photo showing that the seam allowances need to be kept open where two pointy clam shell sides meet up.  

Maybe I would have been fine if I'd kept working my way out from the middle of the quilt, but maybe there's a good reason for working top-down that would have caused frustration and swearing and, God forbid, seam ripping.  I'd rather not have to reinvent any wheels on this quilt that is already so far behind schedule, so I left off working on the middle rows and started working on the top and bottom rows instead, per the magazine instructions.

By the way, in the QNM illustrations they have cut out their clam shell using tag board templates to mark the seam lines and then adding 1/4" seam allowances beyond the drawn line.  That makes it easier for hand piecing, since you can check periodically as you're stitching to make sure your stitches are landing right on the seam line on the back of your work as well as on the front.  My acrylic clam shell template has small holes along the edges that I'm using with a Frixxion heat erase pen to mark alignment dots on my clam shells.  I know some people have had horrendous issues when they've used Frixxion pens to mark quilting designs on the front of quilts, with "ghost marks" left behind or the ink reappearing in certain situations, but I am just twirling the tip of the pen inside the hole to make tiny black dots on the WRONG side of my fabric.  They disappear pretty well when I iron them, and if they are not completely gone, well, they are on the wrong side of the fabric where no one can see them anyway!

So here you can see the completed bottom row of my quilt, all pieced and pressed!  I now know that a normal quilter would have used whole clam shells along the outside edge and trimmed after piecing, but it seems to be working just fine.  I think I planned for a 2" wide border in that same blue so the clam shells would float away from the binding. My top row is completely pieced now, too, in addition to that bit in the center that I'd already started before locating my instructions.  My plan now is to continue piecing down from the top and up from the bottom per the QNM instructions, joining the sections together at the center circles.

SO, having met my goal of STARTING the piecing this week, what are my quilting goals for the week to come?

This Week's Quilting Goals

• FINISH piecing Modern Baby Clam Shell Quilt!  
• Load next charity top on the long arm and decide how to quilt it
• Write next post for my Long Arm Linky party and schedule publication for Tuesday morning!

I'm linking up today's post with the following linky parties:

SATURDAY

·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY

·       Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

·       Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

TUESDAY

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

Mission Impossible: How to Machine Applique Something to Nothing

Good morning, my lovelies!  I am happy to report that I actually achieved my goal of completing all 48 foundation paper pieced flying geese arcs by the end of March.  I had to cut back on some other commitments to free up for sewing time, but Lars's graduation quilt (which I had tentatively named Geese In Circles but have now renamed Mission Impossible: Graduation 2019) is now on schedule again.  Yay!

Four 12 Inch Blocks Done, Forty-Four More Blocks to Go

My To-Do Tuesday Goal for This Week is to complete the inner and outer curved piecing on at least 24 of the 48 blocks

As you can see above, I've already got four of those 24 blocks sewn together.

And...

My One Monthly Goal for April is to complete the inner and outer curved piecing on all 48 blocks, AND get the blocks sewn into a finished top.  

Mission Impossible, 72 x 96, My Original Quilt Design Created in EQ8

Oh, and for me, April only has 21 days because I'm leaving for Spring Quilt Week in Paducah the day after Easter.  But now that I've tinkered around and figured out the fastest, easiest, and most accurate method of piecing each of those curved seams, I am expecting nothing but smooth sailing ahead, seriously!  Who knew I could put a quilt together from start to finish in less than a year?!  (There is NO WAY I could do this without my mom helping me and keeping me on task.  She'll be here at 1 PM today and she's not going to let me leave the studio until 5 PM).

But, before I get back to sewing, I wanted to document for myself -- and share with anyone else who's interested -- my sneaky method for sewing the inner curve of this block.  Sewing the outer curve -- the skinny L-shaped piece that gets sewn to the flying geese -- is easily accomplished via traditional curved piecing using plenty of pins.  

This Outer Curve Is Easy

But the other curve was giving me all kinds of grief because the foundation paper pieced geese are stiff as cardboard from all of the starch I used (and I'm NOT giving up my starch, so don't go there!) and I was having a horrible time trying to manipulate that stiff, flat pieced section in order to pin it to the quarter oval circle piece.  

...But This Inner Curve Was A Monstrous, Miserable Mess!

Appli-Piecing, Curved Piecing a la Applique, or the Fast and Easy Way to Applique Something to Nothing

First of all, let's give credit where credit is due.  I did not dream this up completely on my own (which gives me great confidence that, as kooky as it seems, this IS a legitimate way to sew a quilt together successfully).  I'm borrowing from the methods that Harriet Hargrave teaches and shares in her (sadly out-of-print) book Mastering Machine Applique: The Complete Guide Including Invisible Machine Applique, Satin Stitch, Blanket Stitch, and Much More , the method that Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry once taught and now offers as a free tutorial on her web site here, and the method that Vicki Pignatelli explains in her book Quilting Curves: An Innovative Technique for Machine-Piecing Curves with Incredible Ease. I'm not following any of these teachers' methods exactly, but I would never have dreamed I could piece a block this way if I hadn't read their books, taken the class, and stored their techniques away in the back of my mind for a rainy day like today when I needed to come up with a better way of getting these blocks sewn together quickly.  I stand on the shoulders of giants!

Step One: Print the Quarter Moon (Convex) Curve Shape Onto Heavy Cardstock, With Seam Allowances

Since I designed my quilt using EQ8 software, I have all kinds of options for printing out templates for the nonstandard shapes in my quilt design.  I printed this particular template out WITH 1/4" SEAM ALLOWANCES.  My curved piece is too large to fit on a single 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of card stock and I didn't have any legal size card stock on hand for my printer, so I printed it on two sheets of card stock, matched up the registration marks, joined those together with packing tape, and then glued that template onto a big sheet of poster board left over from the kids' school projects.  I cut my template out carefully, leaving the seam allowances on the outer edges of the block -- the straight sides that meet at a right angle -- but I cut right on the seam line along the curved edge, as smoothly as I could manage.

Double Card Stock Template With Curved Seam Allowance Trimmed Away

Placing the template UPSIDE DOWN, I traced it onto the dull side of my freezer paper 48 times.  I might be able to use these freezer paper templates more than one time, but for speed and convenience' sake I opted to just trace one for every block and rolled the paper right back up into the box.  I'll cut them out one at a time, as needed.

At first, I was annoyed that my traced line was landing slightly outside of the template rather than right on the edge due to the thickness of the tip of the pen or the angle of the sharpened pencil point, but then I tried a cheap mechanical pencil and was delighted to discover that I could get my traced line to land exactly at the edge of my double card stock template, without any sliver of white paper showing in between.

Mechanical Pencils Worked Best for Tracing Templates Onto Freezer Paper

My purple quarter oval pieces had been previously rotary cut (I'll show you how we made our own acrylic templates for rotary cutting soon, I promise!), so my next step was to carefully cut out one of the traced freezer paper templates -- cutting just INSIDE the pencil line -- and iron it to the back side of one of the purple quarter oval fabric pieces.  Because I only removed the seam allowance from the curved seam line, I can line the two straight sides of my freezer paper up with the raw fabric edges on the fabric.  The curved seam allowance extends beyond the edge of the freezer paper and there's no need to worry about whether it's exactly a quarter of an inch or not, as long as the freezer paper lines up exactly with those two straight edges.  I ironed the freezer paper to the fabric with a hot, dry iron.

Freezer Paper Ironed to Wrong Side of Purple Shape, Shiny Side Down

Step Two: Pre-Turn the Seam Allowance Using Starch or Starch Alternative and a Hot Iron

Next, I used a small stencil paintbrush to dab Mary Ellen's Best Press Starch Alternative just along the exposed curved seam allowance, and then used the tip of the hot iron to swipe the  seam allowance back over the edge of the freezer paper, careful to maintain that smooth curve that I worked so hard to trace and cut accurately.  (This is how I learned to do "starch and press" applique from Erin Russek's tutorials, but on itty bitty leaves and bird beaks -- it's MUCH easier to manage on a large, gentle curve like this one).  I could spray regular starch into the cap to liquify it for this step, but I like to use Mary Ellen's Best Press instead because it smells like lavender and who doesn't like a little aromatherapy in the sewing room?

Using Freezer Paper, Best Press and a Hot Iron to Pre-Turn the Seam Allowance

And now comes the scandalous part, because everyone who knows what they are doing uses some kind of foundation or background fabric for their machine applique, even if it gets cut away after stitching.  Go ahead and tell me all of the 10 million reasons why this won't work in the comments, but I'm going to keep on doing it anyway because it worked for me!  ;-)

The challenge comes from the need for these blocks to all finish at exactly 12 1/2" so they will fit together accurately when I sew them into a quilt top.  So for each block, that easy outer curve gets sewn first using the traditional piecing methods.  After piecing that curve, I carefully press the pieced unit with the seam allowance pressed towards the purple fabric, moving my iron only in the direction of the fabric grain with NO steam, and checking that the outer edge of the block remains at a nice right angle.  Then it gets set with STARCH because, as you know, I am in love with starch and will not give it up no matter what anyone says.  (Didn't a band called S.O.S. have a hit song about starch back in the '80s?  I think it was called "Just Be Good to Me."  People always talkin' bout the bad things you do, You never do them to me... But I digress.)

Okay, now that we've danced our sillies out with my favorite Love Anthem to Spray Starch, we can get back to quilting!  Because I can almost guarantee you that if you try this without using starch to stabilize your fabric to a paper-like crispness, you are going to have trouble appliqueing the sections together in thin air.  The freezer paper backing on my curved inside purple piece makes it stiff and stable like a piece of paper, and the heavy spray starch on the rest of the block makes that part as stiff and stable as a piece of paper, too.

Smooth, Stiff, Square, Starched, and STABLE!  Ready to Go!

Step Three: Line Up the Block Sections and Glue Baste the Seam Together

I take the crisply starched, completed section of my block over to the cutting mat on my worktable and I line the right angle corner up with the 12 1/2" marks on both the top left and bottom right corners of the block, and then I use pattern weights to hold the block in place.  [NOTE: I was not able to find a link to my own pattern weights on Amazon, although they do have others and I know you can get some at your local JoAnn's as well.  I probably purchased my yellow donut-shaped pattern weights from a drapery workroom wholesaler years ago. ]

Lined Up On the Cutting Mat Grid and Trapped In Place With Pattern Weights

Next, I take the purple inner curve piece, the one with freezer paper ironed to the back side and the seam allowance already starched and pressed smoothly over the curve, and I lay that piece on my cutting table with the right angle right on the zero lines at the X and Y axes, like so.  

My purple shape with its preturned seam allowance overlaps the partially pieced portion of the block by -- you guessed it -- a quarter of an inch!  When the purple piece is aligned just right, I weight it down with the pattern weights to hold it in place, too.  

Perfectly Aligned, Firmly Weighted In Place, Ready to Glue Baste

Now, on my cutting mat, all I have to do is temporarily secure those two seam allowances together using Roxanne's Glue Baste-It and a very fine tip glue nozzle.  With the already pieced section of the block remaining flat on the cutting mat, I'm lifting up the curved edge of the quarter oval piece just enough to apply glue to that preturned seam allowance.  

Gluing the Preturned Seam Allowance of the Convex Curve to the Flat Seam Allowance of the Concave Curve

I want small dots of glue spaced closely together all along the seam line rather than large globs of glue spaced farther apart, because nothing else will be holding these block sections together on the way to my sewing machine.  The freezer paper backing is stabilizing the purple curved piece and the rest of the block is stabilized with a reckless amount of spray starch applied throughout my piecing process, and this final curved seam is held together with nothing but those tiny droplets of water soluble glue.  Terrifying, isn't it?!  I heat set that glued seam with my hot iron just to dry and set that glue, and then I take the block over to my machine for stitching.

Step Four: Stitch the Curved Seam from the RIGHT Side Using Monofilament Thread and Invisible Machine Applique Blindstitch

On my Bernina 750QE, I'm stitching this seam using Vari-Overlock Stitch #3 with stitch length reduced to .90, stitch width reduced to 1.0, Mirror Image engaged, and needle reset to center position.  I'm using Open Embroidery presser foot #20D with Dual Feed engaged, my 5.5 mm stitch plate (that's why the Security Function icon is lit up) and I've also engaged the Memory function to remember my settings in between sewing sessions.  

Stitch Recipe for Curved Applique Piecing on My Bernina 750QE

I'm using invisible monofilament thread in my needle, the Smoke color this time due to my very dark fabrics, and that's why I've reduced my tension down to 2.5.  (MonoPoly and YLI are my favorite brands).  My needle for this extremely fine thread is the smallest size you can buy, a Schmetz size 60/8 Microtex needle, to make the smallest possible hole and to position those stitches as close to the edge of my appliqued fabric as possible, and I'm using Mettler 60 weight cotton embroidery thread in a neutral medium beige color in my bobbin.

Sewing the Seam from the Right Side of the Block

Sewing with the purple quarter oval section on the left and the flying geese on the right, I position my needle on the flying geese section but rubbing up against the raised ridge of the preturned seam allowance of my purple fabric, just like I was going to do Stitch-In-the-Ditch quilting.  As my machine sews the straight stitches, I want to keep that needle as close to the hump of the seam allowance as I can without accidentally catching any purple fabric in the stitch.   

Straight Stitches Go On the Low Side of the Seam, But the Needle Rubs Right Up Against the Purple

After every two straight stitches, the needle swings to the left and catches just a few threads of that purple fabric, enough to secure the seam but not enough to be visible with my monofilament thread.  

Catching Just a Few Threads With the Zigzag Swing "Bite"

I had to zoom in a ridiculous amount to show you that because I am seriously grabbing only two or maybe three threads of that purple fabric in the zigzag stitch.  I would make the stitch even narrower to only grab 1-2 threads if I was just doing regular machine applique for little leaves and flowers or whatever.  I decided on a deeper swing bite because these are construction seams and I didn't want to have to go back and restitch anything if I missed the edge of the purple fabric altogether in some spots.

Stitching Merrily Along...

I'm running my machine at a fairly slow speed for this, since the placement of every needle hole is of paramount importance.  The bright LED lighting on this machine is a huge help, as is the FHS Free Hands System that lets me raise the presser foot slightly to pivot around the curve without removing either hand from the work.  (A friend of mine who has the same Bernina model uses the Hover feature in the same way -- I need to try that one of these days!)

The Invisible Seam Has Been Sewn

Check out my lovely finished seam, that I had to zoom in on a ridiculous amount in order for you to see it in the picture at all.  By the time this quilt is layered with batting, quilted, and washed to remove all the glue and starch and markings, those needle holes will close up and only the most obnoxiously eagle-eyed quilt police with magnifying glasses will ever know that I didn't piece this curve the "normal" way.

Same Seam Viewed Up Close, But Without Magnification

Even now, it's pretty darned invisible.  It was fast and easy to stitch, too -- faster and easier to stitch than it was to explain in a blog post!  And, because I'm working from the right side of the block and used the grid on my cutting mat to ensure a square, perfectly sized block, there's no room for goofing and NO SEAM RIPPING.  Did you see those beautiful triangle points, by the way?  That was a cinch, since I could see them while I was sewing instead of having them hidden inside a gathered and pinned seam allowance.

Step Five: Peel Away the Freezer Paper Backing and Give the Block a Final Pressing and Starching!

Back of Block After Stitching

As you can see in the photo above, that purple piece really is securely attached to the flying geese section of this block.  Remember that the straight stitches you see in the flying geese seams are super small 1.5 mm stitches in order to perforate the foundation paper well enough for easy removal.  There are two very strong, very tiny straight stitvhes between each of the zigzag swing bites, and those swing bites are close enough together that they really are creating a strong seam.  Imagine if this was an invisible applique stitch someone had done by hand, but they were knotting to secure the thread before and after each and every applique stitch -- THAT's how strong this seam is.  Much stronger than a hand pieced straight stitch seam would be.  Maybe as strong as a hand pieced backstitched seam would be...  Anyway, it's good enough for me!

The First Four Blocks Completed!

Since I used starch to press the seam allowance over the freezer paper edge rather than glue, and since the zigzag bite is so tiny, the freezer paper comes off easily all in one piece with no straggly bits left behind in the seam allowance, and without any distortion of the curved seam.

Voila!

So, now that I've worked out the kinks in my methods, the plan is to sew all of those outer curves(traditionally pieced) first on my Goldilocks Bernina 475QE, which is set up for traditional curved piecing, and then sew the inner curves on my Big 'Nina 750QE, which is all set up for the invisible machine applique.  

I'm off to the studio for some mad sewing, but first I'm linking up with:

MONDAY

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

·      Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

·      BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com/blog/ 

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

-->