One of the young women in my cooking class is pregnant with her first child and I decided to make a cute baby quilt for her. I also decided to make something a bit more complicated than sewing 2 pieces of fabric together and putting on a binding. I must like punishment. Anyway, I found this pattern called, Good Morning Sunshine, which is made up of grandmother's fan blocks. I thought it was very pretty and now I have an excuse to do it and since she's having a girl, I settled on creams, browns and various pink/mauve colors.
Warning: This pattern is considered advanced since sewing curved pieces together is really quite a challenge so if you're new to sewing or your skills are rusty, take my advice and run. Just run away from this pattern unless you really want to challenge not only your sewing skills but your patience and your temper. If your okay with that then read on.
The reason why this quilt is so hard to do is because of the two pieces that you need to sew together are different sizes so that means you have to "ease" fabric from the bigger piece to the small piece and it is hard. You almost always wind up with extra tucks all along your seam.
There's a few tips to get these next pieces to go together without any tucks happening but it's really a crap shoot. All you can do is the best you can and hope for the best. I think every one I sewed together had a tuck somewhere and I was really happy with just one or two.
Tip No. 1: Sew from the center to edge on one side then flip it over and sew from the center to the edge on the other end. Do not try to sew the whole thing at once.
Tip No. 2: Sew slowly. Straighten fabric. Sew slowly. Straighten fabric and repeat.
I got all the fabric pieces cut out and I got the "fan" part sewn together, which is the easy part and I ironed all the seams one direction. But it is very important that all the pieces are exactly the same size as the pattern and its really important that your quarter inch seam is a quarter inch. If your seam is fudged a little here and there then your finished fan is going to be either too big or too small. Either way is a problem.
Now for the hard part....
These are the two pieces I need to sew together. There's a piece with a curve going up and one going down.
I pinned the corner piece to the fan lining up the center. The center is the pin not the red line.
Then I lined up one corner and pinned. Then I started sewing from the CENTER to the corner trying to sew a nice curved line.
I used two additional pins from the center to the corner trying as best as a could to keep the material flat against each other. If you don't, you will most likely have a tuck in the fabric along the seam (the 2 pins are not in the pic above just to show where I started sewing).
After you sew one side from the center to corner, you can repin and sew on the other side center to corner. I needed the extra pins. You really need the extra help to keep everything as flat as possible (see above).
When you first start out sewing curved pieces you will really stink at it. I had about 4 pleats in one block when I started and by the time all the blocks were done I was done to 0 or 1 so a big improvement. I did go back to some the blocks I did first and re-sewed several of them.
Adding on the final section to the outter part of the fan was fairly easy since that was a much bigger longer curve. I first pinned the center, the two ends, then added 2 more pins in each section for a total of 7 pins. I think I had a couple of little tucks but mostly it was smooth sailing.
After all the large and small blocks were finished, I squared each one to the correct size.
Next, I sewed all the large blocks together following the layout of the quilt from the pattern to form the center of the quilt.
Then, I added the solid fabric border on all sides.
The small blocks are for the last border. This border is pretty tricky but here's how I did it.
First, I took one block and sewed on one side of the triangle.
Next, match the fans together so that when everything is sewn, the fans touch at each corner and pin. You don't want to match up the edges of the fabric. That will not match the fan corners and your border will look weird and be too long.
So when you get done sewing your fan corners meet. The instructions simply said, "now sew the fans and triangles together," which when you're the one sewing it all together just isn't all that helpful.
The rest of the quilt went together fairly easily. I did a lot of pinning to get the fan border attached to the solid fabric border and I admit, I had some corners that were kinda wonky but it went together and then I quilted a lot in the area and hid the mistake.
The lady who got the blanket loved it. I explained it was quite painful for me to sew and really challenged my meager skills but that I learned a lot in the process. She sent me a picture with the quilt hanging over the crib in her baby's room and it's nice to know it'll get used. I should've tried it at least once before actually giving it away to someone after my first try but that's okay. I think it turned out pretty good.
Warning: This pattern is considered advanced since sewing curved pieces together is really quite a challenge so if you're new to sewing or your skills are rusty, take my advice and run. Just run away from this pattern unless you really want to challenge not only your sewing skills but your patience and your temper. If your okay with that then read on.
The reason why this quilt is so hard to do is because of the two pieces that you need to sew together are different sizes so that means you have to "ease" fabric from the bigger piece to the small piece and it is hard. You almost always wind up with extra tucks all along your seam.
There's a few tips to get these next pieces to go together without any tucks happening but it's really a crap shoot. All you can do is the best you can and hope for the best. I think every one I sewed together had a tuck somewhere and I was really happy with just one or two.
Tip No. 1: Sew from the center to edge on one side then flip it over and sew from the center to the edge on the other end. Do not try to sew the whole thing at once.
Tip No. 2: Sew slowly. Straighten fabric. Sew slowly. Straighten fabric and repeat.
I got all the fabric pieces cut out and I got the "fan" part sewn together, which is the easy part and I ironed all the seams one direction. But it is very important that all the pieces are exactly the same size as the pattern and its really important that your quarter inch seam is a quarter inch. If your seam is fudged a little here and there then your finished fan is going to be either too big or too small. Either way is a problem.
Now for the hard part....
These are the two pieces I need to sew together. There's a piece with a curve going up and one going down.
I pinned the corner piece to the fan lining up the center. The center is the pin not the red line.
Then I lined up one corner and pinned. Then I started sewing from the CENTER to the corner trying to sew a nice curved line.
I used two additional pins from the center to the corner trying as best as a could to keep the material flat against each other. If you don't, you will most likely have a tuck in the fabric along the seam (the 2 pins are not in the pic above just to show where I started sewing).
After you sew one side from the center to corner, you can repin and sew on the other side center to corner. I needed the extra pins. You really need the extra help to keep everything as flat as possible (see above).
When you first start out sewing curved pieces you will really stink at it. I had about 4 pleats in one block when I started and by the time all the blocks were done I was done to 0 or 1 so a big improvement. I did go back to some the blocks I did first and re-sewed several of them.
Adding on the final section to the outter part of the fan was fairly easy since that was a much bigger longer curve. I first pinned the center, the two ends, then added 2 more pins in each section for a total of 7 pins. I think I had a couple of little tucks but mostly it was smooth sailing.
After all the large and small blocks were finished, I squared each one to the correct size.
Next, I sewed all the large blocks together following the layout of the quilt from the pattern to form the center of the quilt.
Then, I added the solid fabric border on all sides.
The small blocks are for the last border. This border is pretty tricky but here's how I did it.
First, I took one block and sewed on one side of the triangle.
Next, match the fans together so that when everything is sewn, the fans touch at each corner and pin. You don't want to match up the edges of the fabric. That will not match the fan corners and your border will look weird and be too long.
So when you get done sewing your fan corners meet. The instructions simply said, "now sew the fans and triangles together," which when you're the one sewing it all together just isn't all that helpful.
The rest of the quilt went together fairly easily. I did a lot of pinning to get the fan border attached to the solid fabric border and I admit, I had some corners that were kinda wonky but it went together and then I quilted a lot in the area and hid the mistake.
The lady who got the blanket loved it. I explained it was quite painful for me to sew and really challenged my meager skills but that I learned a lot in the process. She sent me a picture with the quilt hanging over the crib in her baby's room and it's nice to know it'll get used. I should've tried it at least once before actually giving it away to someone after my first try but that's okay. I think it turned out pretty good.
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