Sunday, February 2, 2014

Sewing Blocks Together

Now we’re about ready to sew some of the blocks together. On this design, not all the stitches along the outer rounds are not going to add up exactly, so we’ll have to get a little creative when sewing them together. I sewed my blocks together by whipstitching through both loops, but if you prefer, you can go through the back loop only. 

Stitch markers or safety pins are almost a must when sewing this afghan’s mishmash of blocks together, because you can use them to mark block beginnings and endings.

Because these blocks are 2”, 4”, 6”, 8”, 10” and 12”, everything is in 2” intervals as you sew them together. So if a block is offset to its neighbor, it will be by 2”, 4”, and so on. 

Say you need to sew the seam indicated in the photo below. The 4” block lines up with the top of the 6” block, so you’ll measure the 6” block and place a marker at 4”. Then line the 4” block up between the top of the 6” block and the marker, and whipstitch together, working in any extra stitches if one side has more stitches than the other. It works best if you fudge in the extra stitches in the middle of sewing blocks together, not at the corners.








All of this probably sounds more complicated than it really is. I’ve outlined exactly what to do to make the joinings as precise as possible, but all this really means is fudge a little to make each one fit, and sew them together. You might want to sew sections of squares together, then sew the sections together into larger sections. For the very best results, you can steam block your squares beforehand and block and steam as you sew, steaming little sections of squares sewn together as you get them done. This is not absolutely necessary, but it’s what I did with mine so they would look extra nice in the photos.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, First off I just wanted to say Thank You for this great idea and patterns for an afghan. I will be doing 2 of them sized a little different since they need to fit twin beds. These different sized squares will make it easy to figure out. They are both for boys beds and there are so few designs out there that will work for boys. I also wanted to give you a tip that you can feel free to pass along to your readers if you like. To make it easy to match up different size or stitch count squares you can use claw clips (the kind used for hair). I only use the ones that are flat as they work best. I have them in many sizes and they make it easy to line things up. I figured this one out while making doll clothes.

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  2. Thank you Pallie this is an excellent idea!

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