More Choices

I'm going back to the quilt I wrote about on June 19, the Grandmother's Fan quilt.  The fan needed some lace around the edge, so I looked at the Fabric Nook, my LQS, but there was nothing at all appropriate.  So I decided to make the lace.

In my yarn stash was some appropriate beige cotton thread that worked up just right.  But the tricky thing was going to be inserting the lace between the fan and the background.

I decided to sew the fan to the background with a very narrow seam, the needle position set at 5.3, the farthest right setting that can be used with the 1/4" seam foot.

Then I inserted the lace, upside down into the crevice of that seam and resewed the seam with the needle set at 4.00.

These two pictures show how that was done.





The first few tries left sections of the lace unanchored.  I had to go back and resew with a slightly wider seam.  That was when I set the needle to 5.3, rather than just 5.0.  This morning I sewed two of these fan blocks together, and they worked perfectly the first time.

I dampened the seam lightly with spray starch and pressed it toward the fan.  Here on the wrong side you can see the two seams, just slightly apart from each other.







The next decision will be the layout of the
quilt.  It's helpful to put the loose blocks up on the design board and try out different arrangements.

I'm not sure which of these two I like better, but I know that the first one will be easier to sew together and finish quickly.

What do you think, which arrangement is more appealing?