A New Quilt From Start to Finish - Chapter 4 Assembly Line Foundation Piecing

Wow, its been quite a week with the Kaw Valley Guild's Quilt Show. The Show is now behind us and I am catching up with housework (yuck) and sewing (yeah). The show was a success by many standards. A lot of hard work by many people and also great fun and inspiration. 


So, now that I am a bit caught up, I can work on my Judy Niemeyer Cattail Mixer. In previous chapters I designed and colored the quilt on Quiltster, and prepared the papers and fabrics. In this chapter I am working on one series of cattail sections. One of the best features of Judy's quilts is her method of assembly line sewing.


Actually, it should be assembly line sewing, pressing, folding, and trimming. Because the mantra here is "what you do to one piece, you do to all pieces". For Judy's patterns that could mean 4 pieces, all the way up to a hundred  - on the border for example. In this case I have four sections.

For those of you who have done foundation piecing before, this is pretty much the same method. What is different is that you do several at the same time. 

The first step is to lay out all your pieces that you prepared in Chapter 3. I aligned them in the order that they will be sewn with the "sew side" towards the top. In this case, I had 11 pieces of background and cattail leaves. 



When doing foundation piecing, you should reduce your stitch length so that the paper is easier to tear off. Its a bear to rip out if you make a mistake though . . . curse words have been heard coming from my studio. Judy recommends 1.6. So I adjust my trusty Bernina and I'm ready to go.




Following the "do it for every piece" method, I lined up the first 2 pieces of fabric on each of the 4 papers.  The beauty of foundation piecing, is that you just have to be able to sew on the lines. You get perfect points on difficult patterns just by sewing on the lines. I sew on line 1 four times. By the forth time, I really know that line well. Practice makes perfect!


Second step is to press the seam open - yes, 4 times! I sometimes use getting up to the ironing board as exercise (don't tell my trainer Zach), but this method saves those trips. I iron all 4 papers at the same time. I guess I'll have to do real exercise instead.




Step 3 is to fold the paper back and trim the excess fabric away. Judy recommends a long piece of template plastic because you can get a good fold all along a long paper. Using an "add-a-quarter" ruler butted up against the template plastic gives you a nice straight cut edge. 


Now you do it again with the next piece of fabric, then the next, and next, sewing on lines 2 through 11 - you get the picture.  I now have 4 raggedy papers, so obviously there are still a couple of steps left. 





Step 4 is to sew the registration lines using a basting stitch. This is one of the brilliant features of Judy's patterns. The registration lines help you put the sections together. This section has 3 registration lines on each piece.


Now the last step, the fun part that really gives me a feeling of accomplishment - trimming the papers on the outside cutting line. If the lines are straight, I use a ruler. If they are curved I do it free hand. 

So now I have 4 left side cattail sections complete. In this pattern there are a total of 4 different sections - 2 corner sections (left and right) and 2 center sections (left and right). As soon as I complete the 4 right side sections, the cattails will be done and I can move on to the inner border. The cattail sections include some applique stems and cattails which I'll address in the next chapter.

Keeping life curious with Judy Niemeyer!