Today I am a guest blogger for the Farmer’s Wife 1930’s Quilt along, brought you by Angie at Gnome Angel, The Fat Quarter Shop and Marti Mitchell. If you would like to purchase the book, scroll to the bottom of this post for more information. If you would like to join the 5000+ other quilters participating in the sew-along, click here.
Thanks for stopping by my blog! Today I am going to show you how I assembled my “Daffodil” block. For the previous blocks, I have been cutting all the pieces with Marti Mitchell’s wonderful templates and hand-sewing them together. Wouldn’t you know that my first tutorial is NOT Marti Mitchell Template friendly?! For this block, I printed the templates from the Farmer’s Wife 1930’s CD and machine sewed the pieces together (machine, because I just moved and I needed to get this block done quickly!).
Normally I am a huge fan of paper-piecing, but I wanted to try using only templates and rotary cutting for this quilt. I found Daffodil to be very easy to free-piece. There aren’t even any “Y” seams!
A few notes before you begin:
• There is an error on the templates. Once you print them out, switch the letters on template N and template I.
• My block is a mirror image of the block in the book. If you want your block to look exactly like the one in the book, you need to place your templates so that the wrong side of the fabric and the printed side of the templates are together.
Cutting the Pieces:
Before tracing the templates, press the fabric and starch it if necessary. Some cottons have enough sizing in them, so they don’t need to be starched. I like to starch thinner fabrics, such as Liberty of London.
Once the templates are traced and cut out, draw in the seam allowance lines. You don’t HAVE to do this, if you are machine sewing, but it definitely improves your accuracy since there are many odd angles in Daffodil.
I always draw in the seam allowances, since I am hand-sewing and I don’t trust myself to eye-ball a straight 1/4″ line!
Assembling the Block:
Lay your pieces out and make sure they are facing the correct direction. You will see that there are three distinct sections to the block. We will be assembling each section separately and then sewing them together at the end.
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Follow the photo above to sew the first set of pieces together. I pressed my seams open for this step.
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Next, you’ll just sew the one little seam that the arrow is indicating. Press the seam allowances toward the pink triangle.
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Sew the horizontal(ish) seams together, beginning at the top and working your way down.
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Sew the three sections together and you are done. No paper to rip off!
I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Have fun sewing!
The Farmer’s Wife 1930s Sampler Quilt: Inspiring Letters from Farm Women of the Great Depression and 99 Quilt Blocks That Honor Them by Laurie Aaron Hird for Fons & Porter/F+W; RRP $28.99 – Click here to purchase.
I love this! Wishing I’d thought to use the templates to machine piece! I love the background fabric – it’s perfect for this block! (And I love seeing the flower in an alternative colour to yellow!)
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