The Spring 2008 issue of Designer Quilts magazine featured a red and white quilt called Checkerboard Square, designed by Alex Anderson using fabrics from her Never Enough Romance line for P&B Textiles. As quilt designs go, it’s pretty basic: 18 squares set on point, surrounded by nine-patches and sashing strips. The fabric line really made her design sing, though. It included a large toile and seven companion fabrics, and it came not just in red but also in black and royal blue colorways.

I decided to make the blue version, and in the fall of 2008 I cut the entire quilt out. And, for some reason I can’t explain, I put the quilt aside. For five years. Last week I decided that this UFO would be the first one to tackle in this fresh New Year.

First I made 48 sets of sashing strips. (No, that’s not quite accurate. I cut the first four sets an inch short and had to make new ones.) Then I made 31 nine-patch units. Then, because I am admittedly obsessive about such things, I arranged the 18 squares on point on my design wall and moved them around until I felt the blooms and vines in the toile design were more or less evenly distributed. Here are my toile squares:

Here they are with the sashing strips attached:

After the nine-patch/sashing strips that make up the connector rows were joined, I arranged them on my design wall, filling in the blank spaces you see in the photo above:

The angle is a little wonky but now you can see what this quilt is going to look like.

I’m almost half done joining the rows. With the setting triangles attached, it’s starting to look like a real quilt:

With two borders — a narrow blue one and a larger one made of the toile print — the quilt top will measure about 71″ x 88″.

My New Year is off to a promising start. I hope yours is, too!

Sewing around curves on three-dimensional objects like bags and sewing machine covers can be tricky. There’s a lot of bulk to be distributed, and if the object is lined and/or interfaced, the reinforced fabric may not be as pliable. I’ve devised a method of pinning and sewing that works for me, so I thought you might like to see how I do it.

My example is a sewing machine dust cover I just finished for my friend Vickie S.’s birthday. The cover has three main pieces: the main body, which is a rectangular shape that goes from front to back over the sewing machine, and side panels that are curved at the top. The pieces are sewn wrong sides together and then bound with double-fold bias binding.

Here’s what the finished dust cover looks like:

On the right side of the main body piece, I make marks in the seam allowance at the middle and corners. (The corner marks are determined by the finished depth measurement of the sewing machine.) I staystitch a scant 1/4″ where the main body will curve around the rounded top edges of the side panels. My stitching line is about 3″ long, meaning it extends 1½” on each side of the corner mark. (You can see this 3″ line of stitching on the photo below. I also stitched 1/8″ from the edge all around the main body after attaching the lining.) Then I clip to the stitching line, making my cuts 1/8″ to 1/4″ apart.

The staystitching step is important because it 1) reinforces the area where the fabric was clipped, and 2) gives me a line to follow when I am ready to sew around the curve.

Starting in the center of one long edge, wrong sides together, and working from the right side of the main body, I pin one side panel to the main body piece, turning the clipped edges of the main body to follow the curve of the side panel:

The clipped edge of the main body is easily shaped into a curve, matching the curved edge of the side panel underneath. See how the excess fabric of the main body piece forms a funnel? At the corner I angle a pin on either side of the funnel. The rest of the pins are perpendicular to the raw edges.

The second curve is ready to be pinned:

At the sewing machine, I maintain the funnel shape as I start sewing the first side. As I near the first rounded corner, I flatten the funnel with my left hand, making sure the folds in the funnel don’t interfere with the stitching line. I stitch directly on top of the staystitching, turning the fabric as I go to maintain the curve :

Note that this row of stitching is still a scant 1/4″ from the raw edges. When the bias binding strip is sewn on, it will be a full 1/4″ seam, covering the previous line of stitching.

Now I am ready to attach the bias binding. No pinning needed for this part. As I approach the curve I flatten the funnel again:

Then I position the binding. Because the binding is bias, it’s easy to shape it around the curve. In the photo below you can see that I have drawn a light pencil line on the 1/4″ seamline. This helps me maintain the right shape of the curve as I am sewing around the corner.

I can feel as I go around the curve that the fabric directly under the needle is flat because the fullness from the main body has been pushed to the left, away from the stitching line.

Now all I need to do is fold the binding over the seam and fuse it with 1/4″-wide Steam-a-Seam 2. I could stitch it down by hand but I find that the fusible web does a great job of holding the binding in place, and it’s much faster than sewing it by hand.

Here’s a closer look at the bound edges, first from the top . . .

. . . and now from one side:

And here’s a peek at the lining fabric inside:

Vickie’s birthday was at the end of November so I’m a wee bit late with her gift. I hope she thinks the wait was worth it!

Step One:  make a quilt top. In this case it’s my version of Sew Kind of Wonderful’s Metro Rings pattern:

Step Two:  make a back for it. I incorporated some leftover blocks and used Michael Miller’s Eiffel Tower fabric:

I had to piece two widths of Eiffel Tower fabric for the back. To match the design, I used a tip I learned from Elizabeth Hartman in her free class, Creative Quilt Backs, on Craftsy.com. In Lesson 4, Elizabeth demonstrates her technique for matching large-scale prints. Even though the print on my quilt back isn’t large-scale, her technique worked just fine.

See if you can find the seam in this close-up of the back:

Even if you spotted it, I think it will be virtually invisible by the time the quilt is quilted and washed.

Step Three:  send it off to be quilted. It’s at the longarmer now, and I can’t wait to get it back!

By the way, when I chose the fabric for the backing, the name of this quilt suddenly came to me: Honeymoon in Paris. Why? Three reasons. One:  two of the fabrics I used in the rings on the front are Paris-themed. Two:  the pattern is based on the traditional wedding ring block. Three:  there are Eiffel Towers all over the back. Choosing a name was as easy as . . . un deux troix!