Anything Goes - Quilt & Sew Linky Party

Marelize from Stitch by Stitch is holding a weekly Linky Party.  Check it out...find her button for 'Anything Goes - Quilt & Sew Linky Party' on the side bar or simply use the link provided.

I have been trying to sew together a Spool block as part of the Blockbase Sew Along over at the EQ blog 'Behind the mouse'. This Sew Along has been running for a while and has been a great experience in terms of seeing the colour arrangements other quilters use for the same block.

For this week the block to make is #1407a of Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns, the Spool. This certainly is an exercise in sharpening your sewing skills. I have done inset seams before, but this is a while ago...obviously slightly overconfident, I pieced the first portion of the block together (there are 4 spools in the block)

Complete fail...this is the pressed version and as you can see it is completely out of shape and there is something wrong with the measurements. So, my winging it, just did not work...so much for confidence.

Today, I had another look and discovered that my measurements were out by at least 1/8" and I also had to do some reading up on inset seams to refresh my memory.

Second attempt turned out much better



1/4 of the Spool block

 Thought it might be helpful to show the pressing of the seams. Not sure whether this is correct, but the seams seemed to fall this way and the portion of the 1/4 block turned out nice and straight. My block will be 8 1/2in, so this is 4 1/2in square.














Have a great week.

Karin