How To Hand Piece (Tutorial on Hand Piecing, page 3)

Step 7

barn door figure 7

During the piecing of little bits of fabric you start running into seams. You may have noticed that ironing seams flat, open or otherwise has not been mentioned so far and there's a very good reason for this.

Using the Hole in the Barn Door quilt block as an example, pin and stitch a pair of rectangles to the centre square. Make running stitches as usual right up to the seam. Just before the seam take a backstitch, push the needle through the seam and make a backstitch on the other side.

Check to make sure that the two stitches join exactly on the other side to give a continuous seam and no little gaps. Now you see why the seams are not ironed. They need to be unfettered (!) so that you can negotiate which way they will be ironed when the block is finished.

Step 8

barn door figure 8

Let's put a Hole in the Barn Door quilt block together and see what all this hard work can accomplish!

First stitch all the pairs of triangles together being careful not to stretch the seams. Then stitch all the rectangles together. These pairings will make eight squares plus you have the plain square for the middle of the block.

Piece the middle row together first. Pin and stitch a pair of rectangles to the centre square and then do the other side.

Next piece the top row together by pinning and stitching the two paired triangles to either side of the paired rectangles.

Now you should have three rows that look like the picture.

Step 9

barn door figure 9

Stitch the three rows together and 'voila' - there's a beautiful Hole in the Barn Door quilt block. Do that a few times, stitch all the blocks together and make a whole quilt top.

As I stitch each piece together I finger press the seams over to the darker fabric. Once the block is complete I iron it properly and measure it making sure it is the size I want.

Are we all nuts!

How to hand piece - page 1
How to hand piece - page 2

Rose Rushbrooke
Artist

Fractal Art Quilts

By Rose Rushbrooke

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