Cathedral Windows Revisited

 

Here's a follow-up post to the Cathedral Windows Revisited from a few weeks ago.  I finished one of the blocks --almost entirely by machine.  Although the prep work in preparing the white background squares seemed to take longer than you'd expect, actually sewing down the bias edges over the colored patches did NOT take long at all.  I was amazed!

You can't really tell from this angle, but there's a little bit of stuffing behind each of the colored patches. I used some left-over quilt batting -- about 2 teaspoons worth!

  Here's a shot of the colred patches laid out, but not yet sewn down. 

 

I'm taking you backwards and deconstructing the white background squares.

Here is the background grid without the colored patches.  The colored bits cover the edge-joined seems shown above. 

 

Here's a close-up of one of the satin-stitched edge-joined seems. I am still working on the perfect technique for this -- stitch length and width.   

 

Here it is from the back. 

 

Once the patches are sewn in, it makes a nice orange peel pattern on the back. 

The little bit of stuffing on the front side helps add the definition.

Did I mention that at this point, the block is finished--done and quilted. There is not batting in this kind of quilt.

 

Here's a detail shot of that stitching pattern from the back.  I can see that I may want to be a little more conscious of what's happening on the back and I'm stitching those bias edges over the colored patches. 

This is only my first try with the new method. I was so impressed, I thought it was worth a follow-up blog post.

I don't know how long I'm going to work on this, but I went through my scrap bucket and cut all the 2-1/2 inch squares I could wrangle from it.

I have a lot of Avalon muslin left from dying days.  Turns out it was treated with some kind of permanent press thing which seems to prevent it from taking up the dye color as I would have hoped.  So it needs to be put to some other purpose: It seems to be working well as a substrate for Cathedral Windows!