Hi Everyone!

I’ts been so fun to see everyone’s photos from month 1 on the Facebook Group. It always makes me happy to see people enjoying my designs! This month we will be adding a couple of borders to our center medallion. It’ll be a breeze compared to all the piecing we did last month!

The first part of this month’s directions is easy-peasy! Just sew on the border strips as directed. And just so you know, it’s perfectly okay to add at lease 1/4″ or so in length to all your border strips before cutting. I ALWAYS do this every single time I’m adding borders to any quilt. I like having the wiggle room to make sure it’s all going to fit, and then I trim things up as I go.

Remember last month when I showed you all how to make no-waste flying geese? Well, we are going to be doing a lot more of that for month 2. (And in later months too!) When I have a lot of identical units to make, I like to do what I call ‘assembly line’ sewing as much as possible. Probably most of you do the same thing already. I basically cut everything and prep my pieces and then I sew like crazy!

I always chain piece as I sew too, which means I don’t cut my threads in between pieces. I just keep feeding more units through my machine and then clip the connecting threads after I’m done. It goes SO much faster that way!

And as usual, I used my Bloc-Loc tool to do all the trimming. I love how the tool just locks in to place at the “V” so I can make quick work of using my rotary cutter to cut around the edges and true them up.

Once I had my flying geese all trimmed it was time to lay them out to sew into the rows as outlined in the pattern instructions.

I laid out all the units at once to make sure I had everything correct before sewing each of the 8 strip sets together.

Now it’s on to make the Square-In-A-Square blocks which are in centers and corners of the flying geese borders.

There are basically two different methods to make the Square-In-A-Square blocks: One method is to cut a smaller center square and then attach triangles around the edges. I have some patterns where I’ve done it this way, but I find that sometimes it’s harder to get things to measure correctly in the end. So for this pattern I decided to do the method that gives more accurate results (in my opinion), but the downside is there is a bit of wasted fabric. Since we are only making 8 of these blocks, I figured I wasn’t committing a huge crime with a small amount of waste. haha.

I made these square-in-a-square blocks by using the stitch and flip method, which is also commonly used to make flying geese units. This way we know we can end up with an accurate 4-1/2″ square when we are done, and that each unit has the required 1/4″ seam allowance. And yes, I made all mine at the same time to make quick work of it.

Now it’s on to attach the 2nd square to each unit.

When doing any stitch and flip method, here is something I find helpful: Sometimes after we’ve stitched, trimmed, and pressed we end up with corners that come up short or wonky. I’ve found that after I’ve sewn on the marked line, if before trimming I first flip the square up at the seam and it doesn’t match up at the corner, then I know I need to rip it out and re-stitch. Not my favorite thing to do! To avoid this, I generally sew just BARELY – and I mean just a hair – outside if my marked line, on the side that is closest to the corner. This way I don’t end up with shortened corners and things squaring up much better.

Here is a photo below of me flipping up the square and it NOT matching up in the corner. See how it looks all wonky?

Below is what your corner SHOULD look like after you’ve flipped up the square on the seam you just sewed.

Once you have all your Square-In-A-Square blocks finished up you can sew the green floral ones in between each of your flying geese strip sets.

Below you can see I’ve sewn the red squares on to the ends of two of the strips sets I just made and am ready to sew everything on to the quilt.

When sewing the red square-in-a-square blocks to the ends of the flying geese units I changed my mind from the directions and decided to press the seams open to reduce the bulk where the triangle points all come together. You can still press them as directed, and it will work, but I thought I’d try it this way too. I talked about seam pressing a bit in the last month’s blog, but basically you do what you think works best for you.

Sometimes sewing pieced borders to your quilt can be tricky. Fabric tends to stretch so we can end up with borders that don’t seem to match up correctly. So here is one tip that has worked well for me.

If I notice my pieced borders have stretched and are a bit too big, I simply give the longer ones a good spray with Mary Ellen’s Best Press, which is my personal go-to starch. (I use it on EVERYTHING. But I’m sure any other starch product you are using would probably work fine too.) For some reason, my pieced borders almost magically shrink back up, usually just enough for me to gently re-press in their smaller size, and then they fit much better. This way I don’t have to do quite so much “easing” things together with my sewing.

If you were to look VERY closely at this picture below you will notice that there is a red square that doesn’t quite match up perfectly with the flying geese at the points. I re-did it twice and finally decided it was time to say UNCLE. I’m just as human as any other quilter, and sometimes good enough is good enough!

And now everything fits together. I love this center portion of the quilt so much just as it is. My son actually saw the quilt top in its current form and thought it was a table topper that is finished and ready for quilting. (Wouldn’t that be so cute?!) But this quilt is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s installment of our Annabelle quilt. I can’t wait to show you Month #3, so stay tuned!

Happy Quilting! – Kristin

Hello and welcome! My name is Kristin Gassaway, and I’m the designer of the Annabelle quilt sold here at Connecting Threads. I’ll be posting tips and updates as we make this quilt together over the next 9 months.

For this first month we will start with a *bang* by making the center medallion portion of the quilt. This will probably be the most technically challenging part of the quilt, so everything should be smooth sailing after this.

I like to make no-waste flying geese whenever possible, and since we will be making A LOT of them over the next 9 months I figured I’d give you a quick photo tutorial of the process.

Before we begin I have a quick tip: After years of frustration in getting my pieces to be the “perfect” size while quilting, I finally got smart! Now whenever I’m making flying geese or half-square triangles, I cut my pieces just a scant larger than what is being asked (as in less than 1/16″ bigger, like a couple of threads larger), and then sew everything just a scant under a 1/4″ seam allowance. This way I always have room to trim and size everything to perfection.

To make flying geese that will measure 2-1/2″ x 4-1/2″ (which becomes 2″ x 4″ when sewn in the finished quilt), start by placing two 2-7/8″ squares corner to corner on a 5-1/4″ square. If you haven’t already done so, mark a line down the center. I LOVE Chaco liners by Clover, but use whatever marker you prefer.

Stitch a 1/4″ away from EACH side of the center marked line. I used red thread so you can see my stitching. Cut ON the marked line and then press the triangles downward.

Next, place another 2-7/8″ square on each unit as shown, draw a line down the center from corner to corner, and stitch a 1/4″ away from the marked lines.

Cut on the marked line again, and press. Voila! You now how 4 flying geese and no wasted fabric!

I always trim my flying geese to make sure they are accurate, and my MOST FAVORITE tool for this is the Bloc Log flying geese ruler. I get PERFECT flying geese every time, because this tool makes trimming them to size a breeze! I’m not paid to promote them, I just love them and I feel they are worth the investment because they take the guess work out of true-ing things up. Plus it goes much faster! We will be making a lot of the 2″ x 4″ size in this quilt, so if you were to buy just one, that would be the size I would recommend.

Next, we will be making a few Half Square triangles to add to our center star. FYI, at the end of step 5, your block should measure 12-1/2″ square. somehow I left that off the pattern. Oops!

Now we can make the rest of the components we need to put this all together. For steps 6 and 7 we will make some fun triangle units. I always like to “trim the tails” off when sewing pieces like this, but its optional.

A word about pressing directions: Most of the time when we sew, the quilt “tells” us which way to press the seams to reduce bulk. For example, in step 10, the obvious choice is to press the seams toward the N squares. But sometimes there is NO easy way to press seams when there are so many points coming together, and this center medallion was one of those times. I agonized over which way to tell you to press seams, because regardless of what you do, there is either a lot of unwanted bulk, or you end up sewing seams that don’t nest together well, especially with these outer borders in step 11. I ended up going with less bulk, and having some of the seams pressed open.

That being said, you can choose to press the seams differently to have everything nest together, however you will end up with some slightly bulkier seams. For example, In step 7, you can choose to press the 2nd M triangle towards the L/G square, rather than away from it. You can also press HALF of the A triangles toward the L/G-M unit. This will allow all the seams to nest together when sewing the pairs together in step 8. However, this creates some bulk later on when those units are sewn to the sides of the quilt, so that is the trade-off you live with.

And for step 11, no matter which way you have sewn or how you press the seams you will have some unavoidable awkward bulkiness, so it is entirely up to you which bulky seams you want to live with. Or you can also press them open if you prefer. Fortunately won’t matter either way moving forward with the quilt, so press those seams which ever way makes you happy.

Next month we will add some fun little flying geese borders, which will be a snap! Thanks for popping by! – Kristin