The Summer Sun Quilt Block with Janome’s Perfect Pair

The JANOME Memory Craft 550 E and the award-winning M7 Continental are the perfect pair when wanting to make a quilt accent with embroidery. The Memory Craft 550 E is JANOME's largest stand-alone embroidery machine, has the largest hoop size of 8x14 inches, features an extra wide extension table and comes with a built-in embroidery design library featuring 180 different designs and six different letter fonts. If you're wanting to personalize your own design, they can be easily imported through a USB and edited using the machines on-screen editing functions. In addition to the many designs, the library also has several fun built-in projects. The M7 Continental has a seven inch HD color touch screen to help you easily navigate to the stitches and settings you want to use.

And if you're not sure which one is best or how to proceed with a certain function, download JANOME's AcuSpark app which will provide all the details you'll need. The M7 also features an intelligent feeding system which keeps the feed dogs down and out of the way allowing you to easily position your fabric. And it has a computerized needle plate removal so you can easily switch between the different needle plate options. With the one of the largest workspaces offered on any machine and an extension table that takes it to 15x27 inches, it's perfect for any quilting project. With the perfect pair of the Memory Craft 550 E and the M7 Continental, we can make a summer sun quilt block with a beautiful embroidered center.

Let's get started. With the large hoop size options on the Memory Craft 550 E, we can easily embroider the 8 1/2 inch square that will be the block center. Now I started with a larger square, around 11 inches, selected my favorite design from the built-in library, hooped my stabilized fabric and embroidered the design onto the center of the square. We're gonna start by making some half square triangles. Now to make a half square triangle, you're going to need your 2 7/8 inch squares in your two different shades of orange.

On the lighter of the two you wanna draw a diagonal line from corner to corner. Now we wanna place our two squares, right sides together and make sure that all of our edges are aligned. I wanna stitch one quarter inch on both sides of the drawn line. And now you can see we've stitched one quarter inch on both sides of the drawn line. And now we want to cut apart along this drawn line.

Now we're going to open it up and press and you have a half square triangle. Now we need to make some flying geese. You're going to be making flying geese in multiple colors so I'm just gonna show you how to in one color and you're gonna repeat that process. You need one of your 2 1/2 inch by 4 1/2 inch rectangles and two of your 2 1/2 inch squares. On the back on the wrong side of your 2 1/2 inch squares, you're going to again, draw a line from corner to corner.

Once you have your lines drawn, we're gonna work with one square at a time. You wanna take and align your square and your rectangle, right sides together. Put the square on one side of the rectangle so that the line that you drew goes from the lower corner to the upper center. And now I'm gonna take this and I'm going to stitch. Now this, I want to stitch directly on the line that I just drew.

Stitch on my drawn line all the way off of that point. We're going to press your square back up along that line you just stitched. Again I'll just finger press for now. I can go ahead and trim my seam allowance to one quarter inch, and then press this again, if needed. And now I'm halfway done.

Take our other square that we've marked. Place it on the opposite side of that rectangle. Again, right sides together, making sure that the line that you drew goes from the center, middle, down to the lower corner and stitch right on that drawn line. Again, I find it easier to start at the middle center and stitched my way out. Press first, then trims.

And then you've got your completed flying geese in this color combination. You're gonna repeat to make the needed number of flying geese in this color combination. Then repeat the exact same process to make them using the cream, 2 1/2 inch by 4 1/2 inch rectangles, and these two, 2 1/2 inch squares. You're gonna make it in this color combination. And then also this one as well.

So you can see that they are sort of opposite. Now with those squares and rectangles, you're going to be making what is called a corner unit. So for the corner unit, you are going to need your 2 1/2 inch cream square and your 2 1/2 inch orange square. And then another 2 1/2 inch by 4 1/2 inch cream rectangle. You're gonna stitch your squares together first, then stitch your squares onto the rectangle and you're going do it in two different orientations.

One is going to end up like this and one is going to end up like this. Then once you have your corner units, now it's time to just put our pieces together. We're gonna start off by sewing two of our flying geese together into a pair. So here I have my flying geese. I have sewn them together into a pair and just pressed my seam to one side.

Next, I'm going to sew together another one of my flying geese, a different color combination one, with two of my half square triangles. And I have again pressed my seams to one side. I've chosen to press towards my half square triangles. Now we need to put these two together, right like so, and you should see how your colors align. Now why I'm pinning is I wanna make sure that this seam line here is right in the center of my flying geese.

So it should be right at this intersection. So I wanna make sure that that is aligned first. And then I'm gonna go ahead and put a pin in right there. And I'm gonna do the same thing at the other two intersection points. Now, when I'm stitching, I want to be able to see the X marks, the spot intersection right here, of where the tip of my flying geese is.

So I wanna be able to see that. So I want this side up but there's obviously one on this side as well. So what I'm gonna do is actually stitch just this one little section, about an inch, right through this flying geese point. So I know that I'm going to be going directly through that X, right like so. And make sure I hit right through that X where I wanna go.

Just a couple stitches is all you need. Go ahead and take it off. You can see, I have a straight line going right through the point of that flying geese. That's what you're looking for. Now you can go ahead and stitch the remainder of the seam.

And on this side, we now have the two X's to guide us. Our two X marks the spot. And we now have this straight line. So as long as I stitched directly on this straight line, I know I'm going to have all three of my points of my flying geese perfectly lined up. And now you would take this and give it a good press as well.

Again, checking to make sure that all of your points are perfect and that you haven't lost any. You have a good one right here. Good one right here. Good on right here. Go ahead and give this a press and then you're gonna repeat to make four total of these matching rows.

So again, once you have yours finished, you're going to add your corner units to both sides. When you line up your corner units, you wanna make sure that you have the cream on the outsides and that the orange squares are on the inside towards your other pieces that you've assembled. Now, you're going to have two short units and two longer units. So the shorter units to these sides of your 8 1/2 square first, doesn't matter if it's top and bottom or the sides, just do those first. Then go ahead and add on your remaining two rows which are going to the ones that have your corner units.

Once you've done that, and you have your completed block. The block finishes at 16 inches, and of course it has this beautifully embroidered eight inch center that we've done on the Memory Craft 550 E. And then of course the rest of the quilt block was assembled using the M7 Continental. The final personal touch to add to any quilting project is a label. And that is something that can be made on either the 550 E or the M7.

I'm gonna make mine on the M7. With several different alphabet fonts to choose from, built-in decorative stitches and symbols, the label is easy to create using the M7. What you include on your quilt label is up to you but I recommend adding the quilt name, your name, when you made it, and maybe even who you made it for. Using the large screen, it's easy to type out your label and essentially see it before it stitches. Once you stitch it out, fold under the raw edges and give it a good press.

Then it's ray to stitch to your quilt back either by hand or of course, using the M7 Continental. So for your next quilting project, accent it with some beautiful embroidery, try out the perfect pair of JANOME'S Memory Craft 550 E and the M7 Continental.