What’s in the box?

Loads and loads of printed sheets for the New York Beauty blocks, both those from Collection 1 and Collection 2. Impossible for me to resist these. As though she knew, a very special friend sent me another one of these marvellous box books but this one is huge! Some of the sheets in that box are 8.5 x 12.5 inches and they aren’t folded over or cramped in there at all. The book box is that enormous and it’s deep so I can print as many sheets of fabric as I want for these blocks. It’s pretty clear now that the Tiffany Lamp quilt is going to be larger than I originally thought. I’m adding some batiks and a few other metallic prints that play nicely.

So on to hand piecing a New York Beauty block from Collection 2. I stitch the two bands of triangles and the small arc to the corner piece. When stitching the two bands of triangles, I take advantage of the continuous stitching possibilities so they’re done in next to no time.

At this stage, I press it. As the triangle intersections don’t meet when the two bands are joined together I’m quite happy to press both bands in the same direction.

Now all that’s left is to join the four units and the block is done. And it’s really that easy. With the perfect matching points and stitching lines, piecing a New York Beauty is fast, simple and oh, so gratifying as each block is done! Getting perfect sharp points takes nothing more than stitching on the stitching lines. The finished block will be shown tomorrow.

For a great tutorial on how to machine piece one of these beauties, check out this post on the All About Inklingo blog.

Baxter was ignoring the camera so Mr. Q.O. was making some very weird noises to get his attention. I think the look on his face says it, “What the heck?!” He had just been drinking in his wonderfully funny style, so the fur on the right side of his face is still quite damp.