Toni's Garden Sew-Along Block 2

Hi there happy quilters, it's time for Block 2 of our sew-along. Did you enjoy making Block 1?

This week's block is an echinacea flower, also known as a coneflower. We have lots of echinacea in our garden and they are one of my favourite flowers. On really hot days their honey sweet scent fills the garden and sends the bees and butterflies wild. It's catnip for bugs!

My daughter and I have collected a lot of different varieties, in a wide range of colours, over the past few years - white, yellow, orange, salmon pink, pink, hot pink, purple, red, and even one with variegated green and pink petals.

Moving on to Block 2 - I stitched around my applique shapes using the blanket stitch setting on my sewing machine. Mine is set to 2.5 x 2.5 but each brand of machine has a different size setting. Grab a scrap of fabric and experiment until you find the size that suits you. 

If you can, use a sewing machine needle that's made for applique. Normally these are finer than standard machine needles and won't punch huge holes in your fabric. For the best result, match the colour of your bobbin thread to the colour of your top thread.

If you are using a specialty thread like Aurifil, check you are using the correct machine needle and bobbin thread (weight) that suits the particular brand you are using. It will make your life easier and your sewing machine happier!

I'm often asked how to keep the stitches neat... slow down. It's as simple as that, slow down your stitching, you're not in a Formula One race, keep at a nice, medium speed and you will have more control on the corners!

We all mess up when we stitch, so don't be too hard on yourself if you overshoot a seam, or get a bit wobbly on the turns. It happens to all of us. Since when do our quilts have to look like they've been bought from Bed, Bath & Mass Produced? Sometimes my stitching will be perfect and other times you'd swear I'd downed a bottle of vino before I began sewing!

Of course, you can also blanket stitch your applique by hand. It's been a few years since I hand-stitched all my applique. I hated machine stitching and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the (sewing) table. Now I'm a convert - don't get me wrong I love the tactile effect and 'slowness' of hand-stitching, it's very soothing - but it saves my hands and a mess load of time if I use the sewing machine.

For me machine stitching is more resilient when it comes to washing too. I'm a big fan of throwing my quilts in the washing machine on a normal wash and spin - they either survive or they don't. The tougher I can make them, the longer they last.

This is the part of the blog where I show you my less than perfect blocks. I hate that we have to pretend everything is perfect, square, and never messy. One side of my block didn't match up. I'd cut everything perfectly, everything lined up and yet I was left with this messy edge. I unpicked the seams, stitched it again, but I didn't gain much length.

It wasn't anything I'd done wrong except to ignore experience... fabric is a stretchy, messy beast. In this case I put a fairly heavy solid cotton and fine-ish prints together. The two fabric weights (or weaves), whilst fairly negligible in the scheme of things, caused a discrepancy. I should have remembered this would happen, and if I had, I could have added an extra 1/4" to the strip, trimmed any overhang, and saved myself the hassle of having a block that doesn't square up. 

I'll leave you this week with a photo of one of our baby brush (scrub) turkeys... we have a flock of them at the moment, scuttling left, right and everywhere. They are only a little bigger than your hand at this size. See you next time happy gardeners, love to y'all, toni xx