According to Crazy Mom Quilts’ directions, I began to sew my printed fabric strips to my solid fabric strips, and pieced together my center square.
I was a bit too particular about which fabrics were chosen for the center square. I like how it turned out, however it probably wouldn’t have mattered which fabrics I chose in the grand scheme of things.
Because I was impatient and wanted to see the end product, I only put the first two sets of strips together before making the center square. Obviously, putting the next 60 sets together would not be so much fun! So, I’ll show what I did to make the process less time consuming. Many of you already know to do this, but just in case you don’t…
1. I set up my workspace like this:
2. Then I sewed all the strips into a continuous chain, placing each set under my presser foot right after the one before, like so:
3. You will end up with a big long chain hanging from your sewing machine…
…and a pile in your floor:
4. After you assemble all the sets of solid and printed fabric, you can clip the threads between each strip and press open.
This chain sewing method saves quite a bit of time because you are not stopping to cut between each set of strips that you sew.
You can follow along and add photos of your progress at the quilt along flickr group.
Also, you can catch up on the previous Quilt Along posts:
Quilt Along, part 1
Quilt Along, part 2
