Thoughts About Quilting, Part 3

Now that I'm home again, I can pick up my quilting series where I left off. :) After you have chosen your pattern and your colors, the next step is piecing.

There are lots of methods for piecing -- hand piecing, strip-piecing, chain-piecing, paper piecing, too name a few -- but the two I am most familiar with, and find easiest, are hand-piecing and strip-piecing.

The biggest difficulty with hand piecing is that you have to draw a a seam allowance to follow on the wrong side of the fabric. That is the only way you can make sure your seams will line up. It sounds like a lot of trouble and, at first, it is awkward, but once you find a system for cutting the pieces out and marking them as you go, it becomes easy. The quickest way I found was to make a plastic template. You can buy template plastic at any sewing/crafts store. Cut it the exact size of the square your working with and then use an Exacto knife to cut a quarter-inch seam allowance on the inside. You are left with a quilting "cookie-cutter" that you can lay on each piece of fabric and trace seam allowances with. Here are templates and fabrics I used in my wedding ring quilt. If you look closely, you can see where I traced the seam allowances.

Strip piecing is a little more complicated, but in the end, it makes assembling the quilt go much faster. You begin by cutting long strips of fabric.
Sew them together by machine. Hand stitching isn't taunt enough for this. The pattern will call for different widths and different arrangements of strips to be sewn together. Then, you cut the long, sewed strips, into narrow strips. To make the block, you sew the narrow strips together in different combinations. This is a really fun way to quick. I am looking forward to making another quilt using this method.

Of course, you can simply sew each piece together by machine if you prefer. My first two wall-hangings were done this way and my first quilt, the blue quilt, was strip-pieced. I was having so much trouble making my seams meet when it came time to join blocks, that I decided to try piecing by hand out of desperation. I loved it. I had so much more control over each seam and never had to worry about stretching the fabric or getting a gigantic knot in the back to untangle. ( You can see I am not the best of friends with a sewing machine.) Has anyone else ever tried hand sewing? I'd love to hear about your projects!!