City Line QAL - Week 3

City Line pattern available here

Week 1

Week 2

Last week we sewed the strip pairs that will become the columns. This week things start taking shape, literally, as we give shape the ends of the columns.

Turn to Step 3 on page 4 of the pattern. That's all we're sewing this week, but all those stitch-and-flip corners will keep you busy!  For my favourite tips for stitch-and-flip success, check out this tutorial.

Here's what a corner should look like after you've added the background corner.

The background triangle (that's the grey in my quilt) covers the corner of one of the strips in the strip set.  Notice that one point of the triangle extends slilghtly into the other strip.  That part will be in the seam allowance.  The red line in the photo below shows you the 1/4" seam allowance.  You can see the point will meet the seam between the strips once the seam allowance is swallowed by a seam later.

Also notice the trimmed scrap triangles cut out from under the corner.  Remember to trim those as you go.  Don't wait until after you add the triangle to the other corner, because that new stitching will cross this first triangle.  Trimming under that first corner will be tricky of you've already sewn over it when adding the seond corner triangle (see that tutorial I linked above for an illustration).

Repeat on another corner...

...and voilà!  You have a lovely pointed end.  See below how the point is centered on the seam between the strips?

Repeat on the other end of the strip set, then on the rest of the strip sets, and you're well on your way to creating the City Line design.

Thank you to White Owl Textiles for sending me
 these fabrics from their Fundamentals collections. 
Scroll to the bottom of this post for additional fabric details.

Aren't they pretty, all together?  Don't sew the columns together yet though!  We have more work to do.  See you next week!

Happy sewing,

Joanne

PS:  It's not too late to join in this six-week quilt-along.  Purchase the pattern (if you don't already own a copy) then follow along with the weekly blog posts I'll publish every Monday.  If you'd like to have the links delivered directly to your inbox to avoid having to search for them, or if you'd like to make one of the bonus sizes (twin, full, queen or king) currently exclusive to the QAL, you can register for free here.

Fabrics for my version contributed by White Owl Textiles

City Line QAL - Week 2

City Line pattern available here

Week 1

Welcome to Week 2 of the City Line QAL. Last week we cut fabric.  This week’s task may seem short, but I recommend lots of pinning for it.  Pinning always seems to take forever, so I decided it was enough work for one week.  After all, I promised an easy pace!

Sort the Strips

First, flip back to page 1 of the pattern and sort your eight colour fabrics from dark to light as described in the lower right quarter of the page,

Thank you to White Owl Textiles for sending me
 these fabrics from their Fundamentals collections. 
Scroll to the bottom of this post for additional fabric details.

Next pair each darker fabric with a lighter fabric.  Since you’ve already cut your strips, you can put one strip of each fabric up on your design wall, or simply lay them on a table, and shuffle them around until you like the pairs.  Just remember that each pair needs contrast, and keep the darker fabric in the pair on the left.

You can see I did not adhere strictly to the instruction to pair each of the four darkest to one of the four lightest.  My darkest was much darker than the darkest light fabric, and I didn't want quite that much contrast, so I shuffled things a little more. I ended up using my darkest dark and fourth darkest dark together, and the darkest light became a "dark" paired with the lightest light.

All to say, just go ahead and shuffle those fabrics until you have an arrangement that you like, keeping the darker fabric in each pair on the left.  Also, I chose to repeat each fabric pair three times to use up all 24 strips, but you could shuffle all 24 strips for more varied pairs.  

I recommend pinning a numbered label to each strip to keep track of your fabrics once you have them ordered as you like.  I just counted 1 to 8, and repeated.  If you chose to shuffle all 24 strips, you can label them 1 to 24 to keep track of their order.

Sew Strip Pairs

Now flip ahead to page 4 and proceed with steps 1 and 2.

Step 1 is where all the pinning happens.  Matching the ends and the centers of the strips is key to ending up with a straight strip pair unit with nice even ends.  This will also help ensure all your strip pairs will be the same length, which will result in a clean, straight panel later.  Refer to this tutorial for more guidance on matching and pinning strips.

Step 2 is short but important.  Pay attention to the pressing directions. Paired with other pressing direntions in Week 4, these will allow you to nest and spin seams in the center pieced strip.

Here are my strip pairs, all sewn, with seams pressed towards the even-numbered fabrics, ready for next week.

I'm excited to see what your pairs look like.  Did you make eight pairs and repeat, or did you shuffle all the fabrics in more combinations?  Remember you can share on social media (make sure to mention the City Line QAL in your post or #citylineqal), you can email me, or you can share in the Quilting With Canuck Quilter Facebook group.

Happy sewing,

Joanne

PS:  It's not too late to join in this six-week quilt-along.  Purchase the pattern (if you don't already own a copy) then follow along with the weekly blog posts I'll publish every Monday.  If you'd like to have the links delivered directly to your inbox to avoid having to search for them, or if you'd like to make one of the bonus sizes (twin, full, queen or king) currently exclusive to the QAL, you can register for free here.

Fabrics for my version contributed by White Owl Textiles

Matching ends and centers when sewing long seams

I avoid pinning when I can get away with it, but sewing long seams is not one of those times.  

The top or bottom fabric may shift a tiny bit relative to the other fabric every time the feed dogs advance the fabrics.  It's usually such a slight shift that it's not noticeable over short seams.  In longer seams, it adds up so that one fabric seems longer than the other, even when they were the exact same length when you started. 

Even if it's a small difference, it makes it harder to piece accurately when you add this unit to another part of the quilt.  That small shift of layers can also add a slight bend in a strip set, or a ripple in the seam.  Sorry I couldn't get a good photo of that, but I'm sure many of you have experienced that firsthand.

The key to avoiding this is to match and pin the two pieces you're sewing together.  I'll demonstrate with strips, but this works for any two edges that are the same length.  You could be sewing a strip to a larger pieced section, or adding a measured border to the side of a quit.  (Check out this tutorial for more on borders.)

Step 1:  Start with two strips of equal length.

Step 2: Fold one strip in half right sides together and the other strip in half wrong sides together.  Crease the folds to mark the center of each strip.

When you unfold them and look at them both right side up, you will see the creases created a little valley in one and a little hill in the other.

Valley in the top strip, hill in the lower one.

Step 3:  When you lay the fabrics right side together in preparation for sewing, the creases in the two pieces should nest.

Of course you'll also need to line up the edges where the seam will be sewn, but I wanted to show you how the two creases nest so had to pull the top fabric down so you could see both fabrics.

Step 4:  Pin center and ends.  

Pin the centers together by pinning in the nested crease.

Match the right ends of the strip and pin in place.  Repeat at the opposite end of the strips.

Step 5:  Add more pins between these to keep the fabric layers from shifting between the pins.  I like to add a pin every 2" to 3". 

If there's a fair distance between the center and the ends, I start by pinning halfway between the center and end pins, then halving that distance with another pin, repeating until everything is pinned every 2" to 3".

Step 6:  Sew the strips together, taking care not to sew on a pin.  

I don't remove all the pins as they near the needle, because then there wouldn't be anything keeping the layers from shifting.  However, I do slow down when I get close to the needle, and slip the pin out immediately in front of the needle, as close as I can get, if it looks like the needle might hit the pin instead of dropping in front of or behind it.

Here is the strip pair, with a ruler to show it's straight and the ends of the original strips are even with each other.

That's all there is to it.  It's a little more time consuming to pin than not, but in the case of longer strips it really helps me piece more accurately for a tidy result.

I'd love to know your top tips for sewing long seams.  Please share them in the comments.

Happy sewing,

Joanne

Thank you to White Owl Textiles, a division of Lumin Fabrics, for sending the fabrics I used in this tutorial.  These are from the Fundamentals collection "Codici".