Adobe Quilt Along Week 3: Piecing your quilt
Now for everyone’s favorite part—the part where all of the hard work finally pays off and a masterpiece begins to take shape. It’s time to piece your quilt blocks!
The Adobe Quilt top comes together extremely quickly, with Blocks 1 & 6 being the only two with curves. The pattern is basically a creative distribution of strip piecing, and as I mentioned in a previous post, it comes together like a puzzle. There are a lot of unique cuts that fit in only one place, and organization is the key to stress-free piecing. Effective organization also allows chain-piecing to be incorporated into the assembly process. “Chain-piecing” is when multiple blocks are stitched in a row without cutting the thread between each section, it’s a huge timesaver. This pattern is broken down into detailed instructions and diagrams to walk through each step of assembly, but if you feel fairly confident in your quilting skills and organization, it is possible to batch the steps.
Let’s use Block 2 as the simplest example:
- Begin by skimming the instructions for the block. Block 2 is easy, because the section that is most conducive to chain-piecing is all included in Step 1.
- Take your 3 Fabric B pieces (pictured in yellow) and pin each to the corresponding 3 Fabric C cuts (pictured in greige).
- Stitch each together, in succession, without cutting your thread in between each section.
- Once all 3 sub-blocks are sewn, trim the threads between each section. Finger-press the sections.*
- It may not be considered chain-piecing when only 2 sections are included, but use the above method for Step 2 as well. Pin the first 2 sub-blocks together, then the 3rd with the last Fabric B cut, and stitch in succession.
- Finally, attach the two sub-blocks just created to finish Block 2. Finish with iron-pressing each of the seams open.
*This Adobe pattern is not dependent on perfect pressing or nesting seams for an ideal finish. While the instructions encourage pressing after each step, it sufficient to finger-press during the steps of block assembly and save the final iron-pressing for once the block is completed.
Sewing curves is the only other portion of this pattern that causes apprehension. Both of these previous posts (here and here) have detailed instructions to walk through the process of piecing curves. We’ll just do a quick overview here.
- The keys to sewing curves successfully is to stitch slowly and not pull the fabric one way or the other.
- Begin by folding the outer arch and inner curve in half to create a crease down the middles. Pin the fabrics by aligning each edge first, then pin the creases together. Fill in pins along the curve as desired. Avoid using too many, more is not always better when it comes to pinning curves! Always pin the outer arch to the inner curve, so that the outer arch is on top when feeding the curve through the sewing machine.
- Sew the pieces together. When sewing your 1/4” seam, there may be ripples along the edge of the outer arch, and it is tempting to adjust the fabric to smooth the ripples. Resist the temptation! This excess fabric is the margin required to have the outer arch lay smoothly against the inner curve once it is pressed. As long as there are no true creases created while sewing, ripples are perfectly fine.
- Trim your block. The cutting instructions leave room for trimming, so even if the block is not perfect, there is room for correction.
Block 6 is the most interesting part of the quilt, both visually and in assembly. Here are some things to remember:
- To minimize waste, the fabric strips in the blocks to be trimmed Templates 5 & 6 will not align evenly. Piece EK is much larger than the two cuts sewn to it, because there is no point in making the strips longer only to trim the fabric away. It will feel counterintuitive to have misaligned edges, but consider this an opportunity to embrace the improv.
- Success in this block section depends on a consistent 1/4” seam. In Figure 4, you can see what happens when the 1/4” seam is too scant. Template 6 comes up a little short when trying to trim the block. This seam was ripped out and repositioned correctly so the template did not come up short.
For this quilt pattern, this part of the process is definitely the most fun because it goes so quickly! And there’s nothing like watching the final quilt come together to make all of hard work worth it.
As always, I am accessible through email (wellspringdesignsco@gmail.com) or Instagram, so feel free to reach out with any questions or comments. I am excited to start seeing your Adobe quilts come together!
