New Orleans House Project

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Slow Sunday UN-Stitching

I had high hopes for making some good progress on assembling my vintage Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt today.
I pinned all my various pieces on the design wall so I could have a visual guide for attaching all the flowers and green borders in the correct order.  

When I was ready to start sewing this morning, I started with the blue flower in the upper left corner.  I planned to add 3 green hexies so I could then attach the bordering red flower. 

As I have discovered so often with these blocks, the original piecing is very inconsistent.  There was no way the blue flower was going to fit together with the green border hexies without lots of tucks.  Out came the scissors and soon the block was completely disassembled.
  
I pressed all the old seam allowances carefully to avoid distorting the edges.  Then I gave everything a good shot of starch and pressed again for stability.
I had purchased a 1 1/2" acrylic hexie template to help me draw seamlines on the blocks.  The holes in this hexie illustrate how inconsistent the original seams were.  Most of the other hexies work very nicely with the 1 1/2" template, but this yellow one (and all the blue ones) were way off.
Once I had the hexies pressed and seamlines marked, it was smooth sailing to begin re-assembling the block.  
I'm hopeful I can get the blue and white print hexies attached this evening as I watch some Major League Baseball with Dear Husband and Dear Son.

I'm also hopeful Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching will help keep me motivated to continue working on this quilt!