More Dahlia!

Mon, May 26th - 2:38PM

Completing the arcs.
Okay, just for the record, I didn't get all sixteen of my arcs done, just the two shown here, but this way if you're following along, you can move onward if you want.
Last time we pieced the BCDE and CDE arcs, now you move onto making the rest of the two arcs, and finally attaching them. The first step is to create the very outermost unit: the IHI unit. It involves sewing two pieces on one petal as shown below. This is the hardest part for me, so I'll try to give you as many tips as possible.
First, sew the left I onto H. Again, I like to put H on the bottom. If your cutting was slightly inaccurate (the piece I have the most trouble with is I) now is the time when those dots you carefully marked can save you from having to try to fix an miscuts.

So you can see that I was not perfect on my cutting on the top corner, but below you can see that since I lined up my dots (I sewed edge to edge, but made sure the dots were in line) it came out with a nice point and a quarter inch seam allowance beyond that.

Remember that you want to press both your seam allowances towards H (the darker green here). The next step is to sew the IHI piece onto G. I have two different colored Hs and two different colored Gs, but I decided it didn't matter which went on which, as long as I was consistent.
When sewing a pieced curve onto another curve (IHI has a seam along the curve) it's really important not to unintentionally compromise your seam when stretching it to fit the curve, particularly if it's the concave piece, as it is in this case. When I sew this part, I constantly hold the seam with one finger to ensure the seam doesn't come apart.

Other than securing the seam, you sew this just like the other curved seams we've done so far. Again, you'll want to make sure that you line up your dots (throughout the seam, I always look to make sure they're close, I don't put a pin through like I do at the start, I just do a visual check). It's also worth pointing out at this time that while you're sewing along, if you aren't going to sew right through the dot with your quarter-inch seam, it's not worth diverging to hit that dot. If you try to hit the dots dead on with your seam, your curve will not be smooth. The main purpose of the dots is to line the pieces up and to help with Y-seams, not to be a quarter-inch seam allowance guide.
The next step is to sew the G piece to the F piece. This is a slightly deeper, longer curve, so I sew it a little bit differently than the short curves we've done so far.

You can see that I hold the top piece, only lining up short sections of the curve as I go along, and again, I use the dots as a visual reference to make sure that I'm not over or under stretching.

And voila, I end up with two finished arcs (only 14 to go). I get easily bored with repetition, so I actually like doing a couple arcs at a time, rather than chaining because it keeps it a little more interesting. I'm trying to stay focused on this project for a couple reasons: the most obvious is you, dear reader, how annoying, should I stray wildly into other projects, but the second is that I would actually like to have this top done before my wedding so I can hang it in the shop while I'm on my honeymoon, quilt it when I get back, and amazingly have a quilt to put on my bed. :)
My next blog project is going to be an "accidental landscape" a technique developed by Kathy Eckmeier that seems very therapeutic and as though it would a). be very hard to screw up and b). lend itself to all sorts of embellishments, including some fun new things I'm planning on doing with beads and Angelina.
Until then, however...
Happy quilting!!!