Cotton Garden Process

In the process of making my Cotton Garden quilt blocks I have deviated from the instructions in the pattern a few times. The blocks are 8" which will finish to 7-1/2" in the completed quilt. There are 29 pieces per block and obviously most of them are quite small.

The pattern designer suggests drawing a diagonal line on each of the sixteen 1" squares which segment the petals, but with a square that small I chose to simply point and shoot stitch, saving the not inconsiderable hassle of drawing 480 pencil lines. If it is very 'off' I unpick and throw away the offending square! Yes I do, so far only once by the way and that was Kitty Bella's fault; which is a whole different post. Click images to embiggen.

The pattern calls for trimming off the corners 1/8" away from the resulting seam then pressing four of the segments in one direction and the other four the opposite way so they 'nest' when two of the sub-units are joined for each side of the block. Personally I find stitch and flip corners tend to warp even when I press (not iron) carefully. This might just be me but it is real. On these tiny corners I trim away the excess background fabric but leave the focus fabric of the corner intact, see the photo above. This gives me a guideline for trimming and to some extent helps stabilize the corner without adding much in the way of bulk. I then press that seam open.

I do not stress when my triangle seams don't meet perfectly (within reason,) anyone who has a need to inspect my quilt that closely is unlikely to ever have the opportunity to do so. In the immortal words of Auntie May "If you can't think of something nice to say just keep your mouth shut." Bless her heart.

Finally, when adding the joined 'petal segments' to the center square I press the first two sides in towards the square. This allows me to press the second pair and the corner square seams outwards, preventing a lump where the triangle seam and corner squares meet.

Y'all come back!