Saturday, January 10, 2015

Sewing Rows Tutorial

Hello quilters!  I have a tutorial for you today, but first I want to let you know that I will be vending at Road to California in a few weeks!  Yes, my doctors are letting me get out of town, and I can hardly wait! I have lots of new quilts and new kits, and books, patterns, thread, etc.  I hope I see you there.  If you are in that neck of the woods, please stop in and see me!

I thought today as I was working on a little project that I would show you my method of putting blocks together when there are a lot of them in rows.  Sometimes we can get them mixed up as they go from the design wall to the machine.

Here is the quilt up on the design wall.  The top section is all sewn together.  The center bottom section is just blocks that need to be sewn together in the correct order.


There are four rows that I want to sew in one section.  Each row has six blocks.


I gather the blocks in each row from left to right.  Make sure you keep the orientation correct.

I place the stacks of blocks for each row by my machine, with row 1 at the top, then row 2, 3, and 4.  I pick up the first two blocks from the row1 pile and sew them together.  Then without cutting the thread, chain on to the next row--sew those first two block together, and the next and so on.

When I have chained together blocks 1 and 2 together in each row,  I pull it back up to the first row and add block #3 to each row.  Continue to chain together so the rows stay attached.

Now I have three blocks in each row, and the rows are held together by the threads between.

Continue adding each block in order on each row.


Now my rows in the bottom section are all sewn together.


Take it to your pressing surface and press the seams on each row in alternating directions so they will nest together.

I forgot to take the last photo!  But you can get it--just take the chained-together section back to your machine and sew the rows together.  Then press the seams down.  That's all there is to it, and it sure makes it easy to sew a lot of blocks together.  Especially if the orientation of the block is critical, as it was in this quilt.

Hope that is useful for you.  Happy sewing!

4 comments:

Donna said...

Thanks for the tutorial. I will be giving this method a try. And, I love the royal blue and lime green combo in your quilt.

Linda Cates said...

So glad to see your post and to hear you are getting out and about. I have to say that as a fairly novice quilter that was more than useful to me! It was brilliant!! Thank you for sharing your skills!!

Unknown said...

Thanks for this tutorial. This will help me line up my blocks correctly to avoid those blocks sewn to the wrong blocks or in the wrong directions that I find myself ripping apart and re-doing far too often.

Helen L said...

Great tutorial: funny thing, I just watched a Quilt Show the other night, and Ricky Timms showed the same thing: I should now be able to do it since I've seen it twice! :-) So glad to hear that the doctors will let you go to Road to California: you must be doing fairly well. I hope so! Take care, and don't overdo it getting ready!! Hugs, H in Healdsburg