Foundation Piecing Session 5: Completing the Block

Okay, I have all of my units sewn for my block, and I've just got them all laid out here to make sure I have everything in place, and I do, and I cannot wait to see it together. All right, so in order to sew the units together, I'm just gonna move these guys over here, get a little room, and I'm going to pin this one to that like that, and it's just, you know, as you usually do, you're going right sides together. But what's different here is you have paper. So what I'm going to do is take the paper off the seam allowance, and you know, I can even take it off of a little bit more than the seam allowance, if I want to. And to take the paper off, I'm just gonna pull like that.

If you have a hard time getting your paper off, which you won't if you're perforated, but if you do have a hard time getting your paper off, go ahead and just take one of your foundations, you know, one of your extra ones, and just mist it lightly, and see if that ink spreads. If it doesn't, you could just mist the back of all your foundations, let them sit for 10 minutes, and pull them off. So I'm just gonna pull off a few, just to show you, like that. If you have a little thing here that's bothering you you could always use tweezers, but it's not really much of a problem. Okay, so that's if I take the paper off first.

You don't have to, but that's what it's like, and then you have a sewing line. So often what I do is I take the paper off just one side, and then I sew on the other side, and that way, I have a line to sew on. Now, right here, I want that to match. That point and that point should touch, so I'm gonna do just what you normally do. I'm aligning them like that, making sure that they're together right where they should be, and making sure that this is square, this should be aligned all the way along.

There we go, okay. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a pin through there, and while that's sticking up like that, and holding them together, I'm gonna put a pin to the side, because if I put a pin right there, you know, it can, as it goes under and up, it can actually sort of make a little lift in the fabric, and move what you don't want to move. Okay, and I'm gonna do the same thing, I'm just gonna pin this in place down here, and I'm just gonna put a pin in there like that, and then I don't think I need a pin up at the corner. Okay, I'll take that first pin out, there we go. Maybe I'll throw one in just for safety's sake, just to be sure, okay.

Now throw away my papers, and I'm just gonna bring my machine over. Hello, machine. I do love my machine. Glasses, okay, and as I mentioned, I'm gonna be sewing from the side with the line that's printed there. And I'm gonna start off the paper, and I'm just gonna sew along a little bit.

Remove the pins before you get to them. If you sew on a pin, it can break, and when they break, I have had pins that actually the needle breaks when it hits the pin, and the needle has gone pssht, and it's a good thing I've had glasses on, so having said that, I'm the world's worst when it comes to sewing over pins. And since I am no longer paper piecing on this, I am sewing things together in a normal fashion, I have a normal stitch length. You can make it a smaller stitch length, which'll make it easier to take that paper off if you want, but you certainly don't have to, okay? And I'm just gonna sew along, take that pin out.

You know, it's funny, 'cause you're going through so many layers on some of these points, and by the way, did you happen to notice how incredibly beautiful the points are? Let me show you these. I was really pleased. It's why I like paper piecing so much. But just check this out.

If you look closely at that, could it get any more perfect? Look at those, they're just perfect. They're just right where they should be. Yay. That's why I like paper piecing.

Okay. Well, there we have it, first one sewn, and see how the points are matching there. There is no point to match right there, so that looks good, and I'm gonna go ahead and sew this next one on, and I'll be right back. Okay, I've got that first row done, and I went ahead and did the bottom row the same way. Now for the middle row, I'm gonna be sewing that piece to that piece, and, which is pretty self-explanatory, and what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna do what I did before where I put them face to face like that, put on my glasses, so I can see, and I'm gonna put a pin right through that point, and come up right at the same point on the other side.

You see that? Not quite right, and that's okay to take some time doing this. That way they'll be exactly matching. Okay, right through there, and I'll do the same thing here, right through there, like that, okay. Now I have them lined up, and I'll push that pin down like that, hold them in together, and now I'll pin to either side.

It's pretty simple. You may have noticed, this time I'm not taking paper off. That's because I want you to see what it looks like if you don't, 'cause you don't have to take paper off before you sew a seam. Okay, there we go. So let me just get my machine over here, okey doke.

And I'm gonna go ahead and sew that seam, and I'm gonna be sewing right on the line. I'm going to take this pin out now, that center one, okay. Let's make sure I've got thread going out the back. There we go. Okay, so I'm just gonna go ahead and sew.

As I said, you may want a smaller stitch when sewing these units together, just to make the paper come off more easily. Okay. Okay, whoops, there we go. Ta da, look at that. Isn't that pretty?

Look how those points go together just right. Okay, well, I'm gonna sew this one on, and then I'll come back and show you how to put the rows together. All righty, I have all three rows sewn together, and now I'm gonna sew one row to another. So let me show you how that works. I'm going to pin them together, as always, face to face, and that means I want to make sure that things match up just like they should.

Now I have taken the paper off this side, and this side, of that one. I have not taken the paper off of this one. So I'm gonna take off the paper now, off that seam allowance, because if I had all the fabric, plus seam allowances, all stacked up there together in one seam, whoo, it'd be pretty awful. By the way, these little things you're tearing off can be vacuumed up, the vacuum cleaner will do it for you. Okay, if you ever get a little piece stuck, tweezers are really helpful.

Also, if you have a really tiny, just a little piece stuck, you know, go ahead, you could even quilt it with that in there, and as long as it's not quilted so tightly that you can't get water in there, it'll just dissolve and be gone. Okay, don't you love my magic floor? Everything ends up there. All right, so I've taken off the paper on those two seams. I still have the paper on these.

Now, the reason I'm taking them off, and you can imagine, if I fold that open like that, and there's my seam allowance, and I sew along here, the paper's caught for all time. So I'm gonna take this off too. All right. I don't really think you should, you know, sometimes people ask, "Can I take off all the paper right before I sew everything together?" Well, I actually think it hangs in, the whole thing hangs together better if you leave the paper until you're coming to a crossing seam, because you are doing some pulling on this when you're taking the paper off, and you want it to have, be supported by stitching. 'Cause if you're pulling a lot off an edge, and there's no, you know, sewing on the other side to hold it together, you can have, you can have a seam get really loose on the edge, or even come unsewn, okay.

Almost done here. There we go. Now, this guy's still sitting here in the corner. Come on, baby. There we go.

There's always one. I guess that's the shy one, doesn't wanna leave. There, okay. And this little guy, okay, all right. So those are ready to go.

Now, what you can do at this point, if you want, you can go over to your iron, and press those guys open, but I'm just gonna press them open with my fingers, because right now I'm just gonna do that little crossing seam, and I'm gonna be pinning them together anyway. So I'll just press them open with my fingers like that. And, there we go. So I've got a pin here, and first, you can pin however you want. You could start maybe by pinning seams.

I'm gonna pin points. Just like I did before, I've got that pin coming straight up out of there, and I'm gonna put it straight down in there. Right there, see that? So that my points will match exactly. There, I'm holding that tight.

There we go. And then, come on, guy, I'm just gonna pin to either side, like that. Making sure everybody lines up. Okay, then I'm going to take out that pin so I don't stab myself. I've already done that a couple times today.

Really don't need to do it again. Okay, so with my fingers, I'm just kind of easing these, excuse me, these seam allowances open. They're kind of weird, and it can take a little trial and error to find where that seam allowance is. I know it sounds strange, but if you're pushing here, that's not the seam allowance, that's the seam allowance. Okay, so I'm just gonna make sure that those seam allowances exactly match up, and on this side, I'm gonna open it, make sure that's the seam allowance, okay.

And I'm just gonna snug those together. You can feel when they lock in the way you want them to be. It's, what do you call that, they kind of mesh together. Okay, and then come along here, and I have these guys, these little triangles, same as I had before, make sure that those are aligned right there like that. I'm gonna throw a pin in here.

And I'm gonna do the same thing down here. Okay, find that seam allowance, there, like that. The reason I don't press this open, you know, you can, of course, you can sew your rows, and press them open, but I end up finding that I like to, I get going on my machine, and my sewing machine, and I just wanna keep going, and I don't wanna get up and go over to the ironing board. Although, perhaps I should, just for health reasons, just get up and get moving, and you certainly can, but I'm not doing that today. Okay, there we go.

Butted seams, that's what we've got here. Okay, and there's another pin, and then I'm just gonna do those two little triangles, make sure they're exactly on top of one another, the way they should be, there we go. Okay, and pin that. All right. I'll bring my machine over.

There we go, make sure that my thread's back there. Okay, now I can feel with my fingers whether or not the seam allowances are open as I stitch, and you can, too. So, use your fingers from the top, you can kind of tell, and take a look if you need to, there we go, and let's get the thread out of the way. Okay, again, I'm still using that smaller stitch length, just to make the paper easy. Okay, I've got this open on the back, my seam allowance is open there, okay.

Gotta move it a touch. Sometimes I let the seam allowances stay to one side just because one side is thicker or thinner, or trying to even it up. There we go. And I'm sewing on that printed line. There we go.

Okay, I'm coming here, I'm just gonna check, is that seam allowance open? Yeah, it's fine. Okay, and I'll just keep sewing. Okay, there we go. Okay, got him open.

So I mentioned, it can be really hard to unsew when you're using such a small stitch length, but there's a way, I'm gonna show you how to do that before too long, there we go. So there's the seam. All done. Get the threads off, and open that up. And when we've got that all pressed, and the paper's off, you'll be able to see that that point is perfect.

See that point right there? Isn't that beautiful? Isn't that pretty? Okay, I'm gonna sew that next one on, and I'm gonna press the whole thing so you can get a really good look at it, and show you what it looks like when it's all done. And here it is, the finished block.

It's turned out really nicely, I'm really happy with it, and look at the points. I love these points. I couldn't do it any other way. When you think about having to get templates made for each of those little pieces, you'd have to make a template, then you'd have to cut the fabric, and think of the match points and everything you'd have to be pinning through. It would take forever, and it's a pretty complex block.

If you saw that in a quilt, and you didn't know how it was made, you'd be really impressed. So I hope you've enjoyed watching this part of putting a block together, and the next thing I'm gonna show you how to do is how to make really quick flying geese that are also really perfect.