Monday, October 5, 2026

City Line QAL - Week 3

Graphic with photo of 8 blue fabrics in the background and a digital mockup of the City Line Quilt in the foreground.  Text reads "City Line Quilt Along, Sept.21 - Oct.26, 2026.  Week 2".
City Line pattern available here

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.

Closeup of a patchwork unit made of two blue strips sewn together, dark blue on top, light blue on the bottom.  A grey triangle is sewn over the lower right corner, covering the corner of the light blue fabric and slightly overlapping the dark blue where it meets the light blue.

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.

Closeup of a patchwork unit made of two blue strips sewn together, dark blue on top, light blue on the bottom.  A grey triangle is sewn over the lower right corner, covering the corner of the light blue fabric and slightly overlapping the dark blue where it meets the light blue.  A red line over the end of he unit shows ahere the next seam will be.


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...

A dark blue strip and a light blue strip sewn side by side, laid over a cutting mat.  A grey triangle cuts across the upper right corner of the light blue strip.  A light fabric square with a line drawn diagonally across the back is positioned, wrong side up, in the upper left corner of the dark strip.

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

Closeup of one end of a patchwork uiot.  Unit is composed of a dark blue strip to the eft of a light blue strip.  There are grey triangles in the upper left and right corners of the unit shaping the end of the blue strip pair into a point.


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.

12 pairs of assorted blue strips side by side, with grey triangles shaping each end of each strip pair in a point.  Small white square labels are fixed to the first 8 blue strips, labelled 1 through 8 in order.
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.

8 blue or aqua fabric laid out over a grey fabric.  Each fabric is labelled with the manufacturer's SKU.  Additional text reads "Fabrics were contributed byWhite Owl Textiles for Lumin Fabrics"
Fabrics for my version contributed by White Owl Textiles