Conquering the Y-Seam

Mon, May 12th - 2:16PM

Conquering the Y-seam
Well, it's Monday again already. While I didn't make huge progress on the giant dahlia this weekend, I did get some done. (the future in-laws were here this weekend, more scrabble and hiking done than sewing). The most important thing is that I got the hardest part done: the center. The Not-So-Giant Dahlia doesn't have any Y seams, and you can fake them or avoid them altogether in the Giant, but I decided that a few Y-seams don't scare me. And they were surprisingly easy.
I started out with my marked pieces and I sewed from 1/4 " away from the edge, right off the other edge (in the pattern, she tells you which dots to stop at and which to sew right on through.

This one is nice and easy to see, but sometimes, when I'm sewing with orange So Fine on orange fabric, the starts and stops are a little hazy. I'll point out where I've sewn from a dot (that you'll have marked if you make this pattern along with me) and where I sew right through it.
Next comes the Y-seam. I pressed this seam toward the white piece, and took another orange piece exactly like the one above, and placed the two orange pieces right sides together. The I put my need down in the spot where the seam above (white to orange) ended in that dot, which is incidentally where the dot on my second orange piece is.

So this one is harder to see the seam, but I did start right where that other seam ended and stopped at the dot on the bottom of the orange piece. I didn't use a lock stitch because it adds too much bulk in thread. Instead I used a very tiny stitch and sometimes (read: when I remembered) did a little backstitch, but usually the tiny stitch did the job.
So that was the first step of the ever-terrifying Y-seam. Here it is from the front:

So the right, short side of the orange piece is still hanging loose. That's the only part of our Y-seam left to finish. And I like to use the same method as before. I put the other short side of the white piece to the short side of the second orange piece. Then I put my needle down in the dot or where the other seam ends (ideally this ends up being the same spot, but nobody's perfect). Then you sew from that dot/seam end all the way off the other edge.

This is exactly how the piece was as I put it through my sewing machine. This one was okay to sew right off the edge at the end of the seam, so you can see my threads there (and the threads coming from the crux of the Y). And voila! Your Y-seam is finished. Then I pressed as shown below:

Notice the little spiral of seam allowances at the crux of the Y. That's to eliminate bulk. It also tends to keep the other seam allowances in line.

So there is one of eight Y-seams that I had to do in order to put the center together. Every seam putting together the center is dot to dot. You never sew off the edge during this stage. And when you put the two half centers together, you don't get to just sew straight across, you still sew from dot to dot, then press every "spoke" seam in the same direction and make the center bulk of seam allowances press into a little spiral (forgot to take pics, but there's good illustration in the pattern).

As you can see, my center didn't turn out perfect, but it came out pretty nicely (I put this together in about half an hour) and the print really does a pretty good job of hiding the nubbed off points because the eye is distracted by the movement in the print.
Thanks for reading. I'm off to International Quilt Market (to market to market to buy a fat pig) tomorrow and will be back on Monday. I'll try post on Friday, but if not, I'll definitely have a fun post on Monday.
Happy Quilting!