Chart 5: Elimnating Set-in Seams and Belle, 1930s Farmer's Wife Sew-along

Cutting Trick

Where is this template?

One of my favorite things to do with the templates is to show people how to cut a shape that looks like a shape for which they know they don’t have an exact size template. Your From Marti Michell templates know a lot of tricks! The Belle block features the first “cut-away” cutting trick of this quilt, in step 1 of the template conversion sheet.

Modification to Eliminate Set-in Seams

If you followed the first Farmer’s Wife conversions, you know I love to eliminate unnecessary seams.  I always say, “If you can eliminate a seam, it is one less piece to cut, one less seam to sew, one less seam to press and” a class member usually breaks in at this point to say, “one less place to mess up!” And, of course any seam you can eliminate makes a quilt easier to quilt.

So, it is a surprise when I choose to add a couple of seams. I chose to divide the #13C squares in the book into four A-4 triangles and make 3 straight rows in the block rather than deal with several set-in corners.

 

Note:  If you want to make your block in rows like I did, choose a print that won't be disrupted by the seam across the center of the "square" where the large light triangles meet. You'll see in the photo of my block (scroll down a bit) that I used a tone-on-tone print with a small scale pattern.

Fussy Cutting? If you want to fussy cut the #13C squares but you still don’t want set-in seams… can do! Divide all of the #13A squares on opposite corners of the block, make 4 big quarter-square triangle units, and join them into a 6-inch block.

Flying Geese Units

If you are modifying as we did, this will be the first block in this quilt with Flying Geese units. However, the next two blocks also have Flying Geese units. I hope you will be pleased with how easy exact-size pieces are to sew with our engineered corners. We call our Flying Geese the “no-waste, no gimmick” method of making Flying Geese. You just cut the three triangles and sew them together.

Are you familiar with this popular method for making Flying Geese? Using this method means cutting and discarding almost twice as much fabric as needed for each Flying Geese unit! It’s cheaper, and easier, to cut and sew three triangles rather than throw away four!

My Belle Block

Click the photo to see a larger version. Clink below to download the next template conversion chart:

From Marti Michell Template Conversion Chart #5

for Block #13, Belle

In addition to our template conversion PDF download, you will want to read Gnome Angel's tutorials for these blocks.

I hope you're having fun making your blocks with From Marti Michell Perfect Patchwork Templates! Come back again soon!