Happy Flower Quilt-Along - Blocks 5-6

Hello and welcome to another two blocks in the Happy Flower QAL. These would have to be my favourite so far, but I've only made six, so I'm sure that will change! We're sewing our way through the amazing sampler quilt in the book Happy Flower Quilts, and I've added a Partial Seams Tutorial at the end of this post, which shows how easy this fancy addition is to add to your blocks.You can see my other blocks here and here.Dark blue is not a colour I'm naturally drawn to, so it's been fun to stretch myself, and sew with new shades. I feel like this gives a nice depth to the block, paired with the smaller florals in these fabrics.

The blue and pink fabrics are from this year's 30's Collection by Atsuko Matsuyama. The white florals are Cosmo fabrics that I've been saving for just a special quilt as this. They are a broderie eyelet style fabric, so I'll have to remember to be careful when quilting the finished quilt top, as these holes could pose a snagging hazard. I've tried to minimise the eyelets in the pieces by fussy cutting around them.I used a four at a time flying geese method for these ones, and a good tutorial can be found here for this, which includes all the maths for working out your block sizes. This is such a great help as the machine pieced instructions are not included in the book.

Here's my finished flying geese block. And there was another quandry...the block in the photo of the finished quilt was a different orientation to the printed instructions...so what to do?? Well that's the beauty of being able to choose. I went with the printed instructions, but inadvertently made a swastika shaped block...whoops! But it's a such an interesting effect, and I LOVE it!

My second block this week, block 6, was another challenging applique one...these take me absolutely ages! And I still had to re-do the stem on this one, as I somehow got my orientation wrong. Why does it manage to look fine while you are doing it, and when you finally finish it, it's like blah??

These applique blocks all have sashing added, which on the face of it looks like an infinite loop and really tricky...but it's actually really simple once you know how it works. Here's quick tutorial I've put together on how to add your sashing with the Partial Seams Method.Start by cutting four pieces sashing the width that you want and add 0.5 in to this measurement. The finished length of your sashing needs to be the length of the block plus the finished width of the sashing.

1.The side that you begin sewing on really doesn't matter for this. Just pick a side, align to one end, and sew from this end only half way along. Just leave the unsewn part hanging there, where it will get finished off later.

2. Press just enough of this partial seam to make a flat edge. Then turn your block clockwise, and align the next piece of sashing to that edge.

3. Stitch this piece along the whole length of the seam. Press.

4. Turn clock wise once again. Align the next sashing piece, stitch and repeat the process.

5. You can see that the sashing is no longer overhanging the edge of the block, and you're now ready to join up that last seam up.

6. Fold it back over, align the edges, and sew from where you stopped at the beginning of the first seam, to the end of the seam.

7. Congratulations! You now have a sashed block, and you can't tell where you started and finished. Looks very tricky, but is actually easy peasy!

Thanks for reading along...I hope this was somewhat helpful! And on to next week's blocks...