Hello Friends, Happy Saturday to you all! I am glad you are back for the latest installment for Quilting Treasures Harmony Summer Mystery Sew Along! Before I start with today’s construction, I want to say a big thank you to those of you 36-plyers who have been so sweet about the little hiccup. I trust that Quilting Treasures took care of you by sending you the replacement strips to make your strip set having a total of 40 strips! Thank you again for being sweet and gracious about it.
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If you are new joining in, and would like to access previous posts, click:
HERE for introductory details
HERE for Installment #1
HERE for Installment #2
HERE for Installment #3
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YOU MAY WANT TO DOWNLOAD TODAY’S INSTRUCTIONS IN PDF FORMAT TO FOLLOW ALONG HERE. [Please note that this file is the MOST updated version! Always check the postings on this site for the most updated versions of instructions.] Instructions will be available on this site through Oct 31, 2016.
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We will actually be solving part of the mystery today. So, we begin by sorting out what we need for today’s installment. We will need the four patch units made on July 9, the pastel row units made on July 23, selected strips and vanilla weave fabric.
The ready made units:
The vanilla weave fabric, and strips (L-R): soft green weave, daffodil leaf, apricot leaf, party pink leaf, turquoise leaf, azalea spiral square.
CUTTING & SEWING
#1. VERY simple — to start solving the mystery, the units you will need to make for today’s installment are a bunch of flying geese units. 40 total. Refer to the instructions to cut all the necessary pieces, and make 8 flying geese units each for daffodil leaf, apricot leaf, party pink leaf, turquoise leaf and azalea spiral square.
#2. VERY important — do be careful when you cut the square 2-1/2″ squares from the strips because a 42″ strip cuts exactly (16) 2-1/2″ squares. In the event of a cutting error, you may substitute from leftover fabrics.
#3. FRIENDLY reminder — when you make the flying geese, try not to heat set the units with the iron until later. So you can see my flying geese units are not exactly flat at this point of the process.
Also, I would go ahead and square up the flying geese units as best as I can, and trim off any excess as necessary. You can see in the following picture even though I had sewn as carefully as I could, and that I hadn’t used the iron, distortion still happens.
#4. After the flying geese units are constructed, follow the instructions to sew them to the four-patch units to make a star unit. Now, if you want the points to match up nicely when you sew the flying geese units to the four-patch units. You might try the following:
a. Crease downward the flying geese where you can check to see if the “V” of the flying geese unit matches up to the seam intersection of the four-patch unit at the “guess-timated” 1/4-inch seam allowance. If they don’t match, scooch until they do. :)
b. If all check out, I place a very fine pin (transparent blue in picture below) where the “V” of the flying geese unit meets the seam intersection of the four-patch unit. I would very very carefully sew over that very fine pin by moving the hand wheel of my machine when I get close to that pin.
c. And hopefully after you sew your units together, your points would line up somewhat decently for you. :)
d. You will find out a star unit will start to emerge as you follow along the instructions. It wasn’t till after the star units was completed that I used the iron to heat set the sewn unit. When I did use the iron, I pressed and not ironed.
#5. After a star unit is constructed, you will now have the necessary puzzle pieces to solve part of the mystery! Sew all the constructed units together to complete 1 block.
#6. Refer to the instructions for fabric placements to make a total of 10 star blocks!!!
And that’s it for today!!! I hope you have had a bit of Sherlock Holme-ish kind of fun today. I shall see you next week to solve the second part of the mystery. :) Have a lovely rest of your Saturday. Hugs to you all!