LUS assembly progress

A sneak peak of my progress so far with my Loyal Union Sampler assembly.

Assembling is slow going, especially when I can't find a block. Last night I had to take the ripper to some bordering, and now I can't find it! Column 6 is underway. Of course I didn't get enough white to do this layout, so now I am on the hunt to match the original fabric. Kona cotton should not be that hard to find, will bring a piece to the fabric store instead of guessing.

Piecing square in a square units into a block: G-4 Massachusetts

I chose to make my Massachusetts blocks with Marti Michell templates (A3 for the diagonal square and A6 for the corner units of HSTS). This made it very easy to pick the way I want to press my seams and to align the triangles to the squares.

I sewed HSTs to opposite sides of each diagonal square and pressed the seam allowance towards the square.

Then I sewed HSTs to the remaining corners, pressing towards the corner.

I set the seam, then open the corner with my hand and lightly finger press it, holding it open when I put the iron on the seam.

Press in the direction of the grain of the fabric to keep from distorting it.

Put your units face down and rotate them so at the points you have a seam going up and a seam going down, that will nest together. You can see that all of the units have the first seams that were pressed towards the center in the top right and the bottom left.

Use a positioning pin to align your points, your seams should be nesting nicely (you can feel this with your fingers), pin on both sides of the pin, and on the ends of the seam to keep your edges together. I use the last pin when I get close to the end of the seam to keep the block straight.

Press towards either side, but do it the same way on both halves, and then sew the halves together.

On the last seam, I pressed the seam allowance open.

Blue and Yellow blocks

A larger picture, with just the blocks I have done, still with EQ7

Loyal Union Sampler - Blue and Yellow version

I am a bit farther along in my blue and yellow version of the Loyal Union Sampler because I made some blocks for Jennifer and did them in the blue and yellow color scheme before I made a block using her fabric. This is an export of an EQ7 quilt using images of the blocks done so far. I thought this might be better than 20 individual pictures. But if you want to see them, check my flickr link, they are all there.

I am leading a Block of the Week, we are on week 5. Upcoming weeks are not necessarily the blocks you see here!

The many projects

My current projects are each holding their own right now. I finally finished the zigzag on Love Entwined, getting it to a photo opportunity.

The Loyal Union Sampler quilt is begun, or that should be quilts are begun. I decided to make two, one like the cover picture using Anneke's Collection from Red Rooster fabrics and the other in blue and yellow and white. The setting is going to be totally different for each quilt. The reproduction is pretty easy, since I am using the same fabrics Jennifer used (I actually bought them thinking that there would eventually be an LUS pattern). The blue and yellow and white takes a bit of thought since it is totally scrappy. Someone was talking about Lollyquiltz and how she set her Farmer's Wife Sampler, and I think it will be perfect for the blue/yellow/white version, see here.Here are a few fuzzy blocks from each type (I am making them both at the same time, except for the few I made when testing blocks for Jennifer).

And finally, continuing on the Civil War BOM with the Stitchin' Witches:

This one is Union Square.