Our next month in our 13 month long quilting project for On Wander Lane was for the month of May. After sewing the background fabric together (I didn't change any this month), I ironed down the pre-cut applique pieces that was sent to me in the packet. I used the block guideline to help place everything. There was some really small pieces in this one. The birds beaks and little hearts were tiny and the fabric was fraying even with the interfaced glue on the back. One of the hearts tore and I wasn't sure about trying to sew these little pieces down, so I decided to cover them with embroidery floss.
In addition to the main block, we had 3 additional blocks to make. The bird block, the flower block and the house block.
First, I cut all the separate little fabric pieces from the enclosed fabrics sent and there were a lot. It takes a while and I go slow and check everything off as I cut the pieces. Then I can follow the instructions to put everything together. The instructions have you make a lot of half square triangles or HST in quilting lingo. You do that by placing a smaller piece of fabric on the corner of another piece of fabric which is usually a different color. You can draw a line from corner to corner, like below, put the needle DOWN at the corner and sew straight across to the opposite side. You just have to make sure your sewing the diagonal correctly from the left or from the right. I have 1/4" tape on my machine (black/red/black lines) that act as a guide. You can see the end corner on the red line. If I keep that corner on the red line, I know that's where my needle will be, since the red line is directly in front of the needle. So when I sew across, I've effectively replaced the white fabric with the gold (in this case) after I iron the gold fabric over (the gold triangle on the left will flip over to the right side).
The first block I made is the bird block. As you can see in the picture below, a lot of the corners were replaced with another color using the method above. The exception was making the legs. After you sew everything together you have the finished bird block.
The next was the flower block. Using the same method, I made 4 of the block below, then sewed them all together and the effect was a flower.
The next was the house block. The center block (the house) was cut out of the fabric with all the months houses on it. And then the outer block were made using the HST method and sewn together.
The additional blocks will be used in the final large quilt in the border so for right now, I just get to hold on to them.
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