Canada Day Quilt...Making the maple leaf quadrants

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It has taken me a while to get to this point! I've been spending a lot of time with my granddaughters, and the weather has been so nice that instead of getting in a bit of sewing early morning and late afternoon,  I've been heading out for a walk. 

But today it's snowing again :(. We're not supposed to get very much, but ...yuck!

I started putting the quadrants together yesterday.  When I took the first one off the machine and looked I shook my head and asked myself if I had pinned with my eyes closed! After a few minutes with Jack the ripper I started over with a new approach.  I know I am more pleased with my seams and points if my seams nest, and they always nest best with the bottom seam pointing toward the needle. 

A lot of the seams in the maple leaves just weren't playing nice when I started to put them together, so it was time to start moving seams the other way.  Of course some seams won't move because they are already sewn down under a second seam. I don't let that stop me. I move the seam and press the bottom flat later.

The stems really didn't want to play nice, because after trimming they were all slightly different.  So I  pushed one side of the seam so that the bottom one faced the machine, pinned, and then sewed. 

Then I ironed the pushed seams flat.

It also helped to line up if I started with just the x in the center of the quadrant, pinned and sewed,  and then pinned and sewed each side of the x separately. 

When you look at the finished quadrants,  your eyes are drawn to the x, so the outside edges need to be lined up. Again because the stems are all slightly different,  sometimes it will be difficult to line up both the edges and the center seam. Focus on the edges. No one will notice the center seams.

In an ordinary block I would take this out,  but look closely at the width of the stems. This is as good as it gets.

Another hint: If one of your pieces of fabric is a little too long after you pin to match seams or points, sew with the too long piece on the bottom.  The feed dogs will help take care of the problem. 

See...no puckers at all!

I'm doing 2 quilts,  which means 8 of these 4 patches.  3 are complete and the other 5 are in strips of 2. Hopefully I'll get them together later today!

Next up sashing,  but not the inner border. More about that next time!

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