Thursday 28 May 2015

Pattern matching: Playing peek-a-boo with seams

As I was sewing the drunkards path blocks for my secret project and the quilt was gradually getting bigger, it occurred to me that anything over 44" wide meant a pieced back. It eventually ended up 47" by 52" even without the two inch overage. Drat.

And with the cute Melly and Me Wildflower Meadow print I'd chosen, I would either have to put a really skinny pieced strip in the middle of the two halves or pattern match along a centre seam.

Eek. I've never pattern matched before.

I read a few blogger guides and had a go. Apart from a moment of panic when I thought I didn't have any fabric glue (anyone know what the equivalent of Elmers glue in the UK is?) it went fairly smoothly. I won't attempt to set out the full process here as there are so many excellent tutorials already available. My only advice would be to check your repeat occurrence (ie how often the pattern repeats itself horizontally and vertically) so that you know how much potential overlap (and therefore wastage) your likely to have. You'll need to factor this in to your yardage calculation.

I won't claim that I matched the seams perfectly; there's at least one flower and a bull rush that is slightly askew.



And let's not play the game of "oh gosh, where can that seam be?". It's right there, stonkingly  obvious. See it? Of course you do.


But once it's pressed and quilted over, I'm hoping the tiny recipient will forgive any flaws.

Imperfectly finished is better then perfectly unfinished, right?

2 comments:

  1. I am impressed! Looks great to me!

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  2. It's lovely and after quilting no one will ever be able to tell! I get nervous about pattern-matching, too, so I usually just put a contrast strip in it instead. I like yours better! As for the glue, Elmer's is just a washable glue that dissolves in water, so any "school glue" will work. Is the European brand called Pritt? Seem to remember that. Your seam is just great without the glue, though!

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