Going round the bend
Something strange has happened to me in the last week or two - I’ve become a person who likes sewing curves. Lots of curves.
The eagle-eyed among you will be thinking “wait a second, haven’t I seen a curvy cushion pattern in her shop? She must love them!”, and you’d be right. I liked sewing curves on a small scale (maximum 16), but quilt-scale curves in their tens, even hundreds? No thank-you!
For some reason the feeling of dread at the prospect of sewing enough curves to fill a full-sized quilt didn’t stop me starting to doodle away and before I knew it I had planned out a pattern, bought fabric and was facing the prospect of actually having to sew those dastardly curves my (clearly possessed) doodling hand had drawn.
Orange Blossoms Quilt by Cait Lisle Designs
While I was very tempted to hide the fabric at the back of a cupboard and pretend it wasn’t there, I took a deep breath and started to sew. Thanks to a couple of nifty little tricks, around 50 curves in I realised that I was actually enjoying the process and looking forward to being able to sew the next batch up!
So here are my favourite tips and tricks to mastering curves and falling in love with their limitless possibilities:
First up, pins are your friend. I think the best tip I got when learning to sew curves was to put an extra pin horizontally on each side to help keep the fabric perfectly in place when moving it under the presser foot. Starting out this time, I thought I’d skip that step and boy did I regret it pretty sharpish!
When you’ve lined the straight edges up, insert a pin horizontally just over 1/4” away from the curve. Next, insert another pin vertically just along from the corner.
Second, don’t be scared to stretch the fabric a little to help it go around the curved seam. I know this goes against pretty much everything we’ve ever been told about sewing, but I promise that it really does help get a better seam.
Third, batch sew. Making a 84” quilt of 6” blocks, I had a LOT of blocks to sew. Pretty much the only way I could stay on top of what block was what and how many of which I had left to do was batch them all up by type. I’d pin 15 or so of a particular colour combination or style of curve at a time, then press them and trim them before moving on to the next lot. It felt so much more manageable when I was just focussing on one pile at a time!
For orange peel blocks, don’t press after the first seam. While this felt wrong the first time I tried it, I found that my blocks were a lot more accurate and neater then when I’d pressed each seam separately. Weird, but it worked for me!
Another tip for orange peels, press the seams away from the central segment to get a flatter (and less warped) block
I hope those help! If you have any tips or tricks you just couldn’t do without, share them in the comments below.