Blog Hop Party Pindows Tutorial - Tips

There was a question on Part One as to the number of white squares you'll need.  If you are working this project from scraps, you will only need 32 printed 5" squares and 32 white 5" squares.  Since I will be giving away a pre-pack of 40 printed squares I will also be giving away 40 white squares - that way you can practice with some of your least favourite prints before stitching into the ones you adore.

In the picture below there are two points to look at - one is the little blue triangle off to the left, and the other is the mess of tension down the stitching.  The little blue scrap is a remnant from a binding that has been repurposed as a leader.  Leaders, also called spiders, are just any bit of fabric you have on hand that you stitch through before you start the main patch.  If you find your first few stitches (or back-stitches) are pushing the edges of your fabric into your throat plate, stitching through a leader first can create a good foundation so that you have good tension when you move on to your patch.    And speaking of tension, it's a bit of a mess in this first picture:

 

 If your tension is off by just a little bit you may be able to gently tug from both ends of your stitching to even it out.  And by gently tug, I mean gently - no harder than you might tug a puppy's ears when you're playing!  If you tug too hard you will either break the stitches, or distort the grain of the fabric, both of which fall under the heading 'not good things'.  Your machine's manual should have trouble-shooting tips in the back for adjusting your top and bobbin thread tension.  If all your efforts adjusting various knobs and wheels have failed to even out your thread tension, take all the thread out of your machine, go have a cuppa, come back, re-thread with a new bobbin and try again. 

Proper tension should look like this:

Trimming - If you didn't trim the points of your blocks in Part One, step four when you cut them in half, you should really do it when you square your blocks:

 If you don't trim your corners, when you try to sew all your half-square triangles together you will wind up with a little haystack like this (which is a pain in the tuchus to quilt over):

If you missed part one, visit here.

If you haven't yet signed up for a chance to win a kit to make this quilt, visit here.