I need to make 10 of these for the next round of my Dance of the Poinsettias – which is now the name of my Can Can quilt, thanks to a comment left on my last post!
I really am enjoying making this top but I wanted to see if I could speed it up with some hybrid piecing. This little pink and white unit is perfect for that.
The centre two skinny pink diamonds are machine pieced.
As are the pairs of two larger white diamonds that are on either side of the unit.
The piecing that’s left to do is all continuous piecing, which makes it fun to hand piece and so much faster to put together. Now it will take just three threads to join the unit together.
And it looks like this completed! I’m sold on hybrid piecing now and will, I think, look for more opportunities to use it in other quilts.
The piecing is finished and the seams are graded, and it presses perfectly.
I looked at the remaining parts of the top to see what else would be perfect for hybrid piecing and identified quite a bit. And then I was sitting at the sewing machine, chain piecing lots and lots of the larger white diamonds and skinny green diamonds into pairs and some other elements as well. My goal is to leave only the continuous piecing, aka the fun stuff, for hand piecing. Along with making this more fun and faster to put together, I think this has been a great learning curve for me and I’ll definitely be doing more hybrid piecing in the future. That way maybe I can get more things done a bit quicker! Of course having the perfect stitching lines printed on the back of my fabrics helps bolster my confidence while machine piecing as well.
“Chain Stitching”
Baxter was sitting on the couch and being oh, so cooperative as I took pictures of him. I love this one – it shows his little white milk moustache.
Quilt Obsession 
Love to see your work in progress,
Envoyé de mon iPad
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Thank you so much!
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With Linda turning out so many lovely designs I think I need to adopt this strategy as well or i will never be abke to finish anything.
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It’s actually amazing how much time some hybrid piecing saves. And makes it easier to try to stay on top of all the projects in progress — try being the operative word!
Cathi
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I love the name “ the dance of the poinsettia “ . Lovely block,and nice chain stitching central.
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Thank you – it’s a fun block to sew! I can’t take credit for the name, but I think it’s perfect for this top.
Cathi
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you said “continuous piecing”. Do you mean all the hand piecing was in one continuous go? Could you explain the order of stitching so I can follow how you did it? I love your idea of the hybrid method!
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I’ve just written a post that will publish tomorrow on my blog that will — I hope — explain how I sewed the unit together with just three lines of continuous sewing. I think once you see the diagram it will make sense.
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Very cool, Cath! And please tell Mr QO that I really loved the “Swinger Sewing Machine!”
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While I’ll never give up hand piecing, hybrid piecing is hopefully going to make a big difference in how quickly I’ll get the top finished.
Cathi
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To Mr. O, that is a very unusual sewing machine, and I’m not referring to the brand. We all know the operator is a ‘swinger’!
And Congrats to the operator. You have now entered the ‘industrial age’!!
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You noticed! Thanks
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I’m pleased I finally saw the light, so to speak, about hybrid piecing! This design has a lot of different elements in it and that hybrid piecing is going to make it so much easier to get it finished!
Cathi
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Hi Cathi, just checking on you and making sure you are ok. Hugs.
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Thanks, Liz. I am okay and am finally slowly working my way out of the sewing doldrums. I think I have something ready to photograph and will hopefully post in a day or two!
Thank you for checking up on me.
Cathi
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