Hi everyone, welcome to week 3 of the Courting Sew Along. I've loved seeing your heart blocks on social media - keep it up! There are some beautiful quilts being made out there. Don't forget to tag me in your posts so that I can you into the draw for the heart pincushion I showed last week - it comes with a little pair of scissors and a few other special treats too.
This week we are going to start construction of our blocks. When I made my quilt, I did the same step on each block all at the same time - it certainly saves time and makes things a little speedier, especially as most of the layouts have only 9 blocks.
I've done my block in a slightly different order here, so that you can see how the different placement of colours will change the look of your block. Instead of sewing onto the sides of the centre first, I sewed to top and bottom first with my feature colour (labelled pink in the pattern. This would make the "stripes" of pink in my original quilt run from the top of the quilt to the bottom, instead of side to side. It does change the look of the block, but I thought it would be interesting for you to see the difference.
To piece these blocks more speedily, first sew the top and bottom squares onto the centre (in the pattern this would be to either side of the heart, not the top and bottom):
And do that to all 9 blocks. Press the seams away form the centre square.
Next, cut the first set of strips for the second colour (white in the pattern), and stitch them to the block. Its important, even from this early stage, to find the centre of the strip and the centre of the block:
Pin the centre, then the ends of the strip, and then pin between. Blocks of this sort are easily distorted! Its really tempting to just sew a strip on and cut it off to the length of the block, I know - you can try it if you like, but I guarantee that by the time you reach the outer strips, you will have a very wonky block with wavy edges, that isn't quite the size you expected it to be. It takes a little extra time, but if you pin the strips onto all 9 blocks, sew one side, then pin the next 9 and sew etc, you'll find that the quilt grows pretty quickly!
Don't forget as you go along to take note of how many strips on each block you need for the size quilt you're making, as they're all different and you don't want to have to unpick :( boo to unpicking!
Have fun with your blocks this week peeps and next week we are going to assemble the quilt and make the border. I hope you're all enjoying your stitching!
Sarah x
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