Sound Waves Baby Quilt, QAL: Week 2

Here we are at Week 2 of our quilt along! If you haven’t got your pattern yet, you can order it here. You can view the quilt along schedule here. If you’re joining us late, you can still sign up as long as the quilt along is still going. Sign up here.

I love seeing your progress pictures. So, keep those coming! Keep posting those progress pictures on Instagram with the #soundwavesbabyquiltqal, #soundwavesbabyquilt, and tag me @snugglebugstitching.

This week we are going to put our quilt tops together. I know that sounds intense that there is only one week blocked off for piecing the quilt top… BUT, this one is so fast and easy. I thought our time would be better spent by adding finishing (basting, quilting, and binding) into the schedule instead of stopping when the top is finished.

For this post, we’re going to cover a few things get asked about a lot – piecing and pressing. I’ll be referring to the pieces by letters. You can find the diagram with each piece labeled by letter on page 3 of your pattern.

Can I chain piece this one?

I like chain piecing as much as the next quilter. It saves time and thread. I’ve seen some quilters say you can chain piece anything. I’m going to go ahead and disagree with that one. There really are some designs that you can’t chain piece… Take a look at my Sarah Elizabeth Quilt. I dare you to find a way to chain piece that one. Just kidding, you can’t chain piece it. There may be a few spots where you can do a little bit of chain piecing, but it just isn’t possible to chain piece the whole thing with all of the partial seams and no consistent block sizes.

Sound Waves Baby Quilt isn’t even close to being as difficult as Sarah Elizabeth, but it is similar in that chain piecing would be a little tricky. What do I mean by tricky chain piecing? First, we need to back up and talk about what chain piecing is. If you aren’t familiar with chain piecing, check out my page on chain pieceing from the Checker Cakes Quilt Along.

Checker Cakes was perfect for chain piecing. You can actually use chain piecing for the entire quilt. Sound Waves Baby quilt is different though. Let’s talk about why it’s different.

We’ll start by looking at how the “A” pieces go together. It looks like it would be perfectly reasonable to chain piece those columns and just cut the connecting thread when you’re done. BUT, that may be a little trickier than it sounds. If you are going super scrappy with the “A” pieces, none of the prints are directional, AND you don’t care what order they end up sewn together in, chain piecing them isn’t complicated. But, if you don’t meet all of those conditions, it gets a little complicatedharder. This explaination will make a lot more sense with some pictures, so I drew up some diagrams to explain this.

Let’s piece these. We’ll start with an example of why chain piecing can be tricky here.

1. We’ll start by laying out the “A” squares the way we want them to look in the quilt. I have these mocked up in the same colors that I used for the quilt in the picture at the top of the post. My prints weren’t directional, but I added some numbers in the first column. In the next diagrams, these will help you see how directional prints complicates things a little bit if you’re going to try to chain piece the “A” squares into the columns you need for this pattern. The arrows show how you would sew these together if you were chain piecing them. You may already see a problem with this…

2. Check out the picture below. This is what that looks like now that you’ve chain pieced it. The lines in between each row represent where the threads would still be there connecting each row after you chain pieced them. Do you see a problem with this image? Do you want all of the “A” pieces in each unit to be the same color?

3. The picture below shows what these units look like after we cut the connecting threads and flip them so that they look like the columns of “A” pieces the pattern calls for. All the pieces in each column are the same color, AND the directional prints are going in the wrong direction. This wouldn’t be a problem if you go really scrappy with the “A” pieces, you don’t use any directional prints, and you don’t care what order the pieces end up in. Unfortunately I didn’t really meet ANY of those conditions with this top I’m making for this quilt along.

Now, here’s how to fix this problem:

1. You want to take that layout you had in step one in the first example and rotate it 90 degress to the left. I left the numbers on there so you can see how this will look in relation to your directional prints. The picture below shows this.

2. The picture below shows what these will look once they are sewn together and still have the thread connecting each row you assembled. You can already tell that this is giving us multiple colors in each unit like I wanted.

3. So, let’s cut those connecting threads and flip these back over so that they look like the columns of “A” pieces we need for this pattern. The picture below shows that the directional prints ended up the way they wanted them to, and I was able to keep the green, orange, yellow, repeat pattern that I wanted for these columns.

If you think this is a little too complicated for just sewing your “A” pieces into columns of 6… well, you are correct. You CAN chain piece these, but it may not be worth the extra thinking. I like chain piecing because it is repetitive and relaxing; I don’t have to think too much. I don’t want to worry with trying to rotate my layout so that when I flip it in the correct direction it still looks right. I don’t want to think about turning each piece so that the directional prints will be correct after I piece them and turn them back again. I did enough thinking when I wrote the pattern =). The chain piecing in the example above is not the mindlessly relaxing bliss that we all know and love. This is already a pretty quick top to make. So, all of the extra thinking involved with trying to chain piece that section is probably not worth it for most of us.

Adding the “B” and “C” pieces around the “A” pieces

This is the part of the pattern that works best for chain piecing. It’ll make a lot more sense to just watch me first. So, check out this demo video I posted to my instagram. In the video, you can see me making some of the seams go the way I want them to while I was piecing. This brings us to the next topic – pressing.

Pressing

Disclaimer here: I am NOT a longarmer. I’ve never even sent a quilt off to longarmed. There is nothing wrong with sending quilts off to be longarmed. Longarmers do GREAT work, and if you’d rather move on to piecing your next quilt, GO FOR IT. Making quilts is supposed to be fun. So, do what’s fun to you. If you do send your quilt off to be longarmed, mind what your longarmer says instead of listening to me.

I’m not as much of a stickler for pressing as some pattern designers. It’s not that I think pressing isn’t important. I just think that the whole point of pressing is for accuracy – accuracy with cutting, and accuracy with lining up your seams. If you do a good job with those, the people who recieve your quilts are not likely to know care about if you pressed your seams to the sides or open.

I sort of feel a little silly putting pressing instructions in the patterns because I feel like most people are going to ignore them and just do whatever they want to do. If this is you, you are not hurting my feelings. Whatever gets you the best results is what you need to do. Don’t worry if someone else does things differently. Would you believe I’ve never had a client ask me if I press my seams to the sides or open? I figure they haven’t asked me this becuase they either don’t know this is a thing to debate over, they don’t care because they like the final product, or both.

I talk a little about pressing seams open vs to the sides on the pressing page from the Checker Cakes Quilt along.

Each Week on the Blog

I’ll link to all of the other weeks near the end of each post. I will add each post here as I have them. You can also find this on the Quilt Alongs Page.

Week 1 – Gather fabrics and cut pieces
Week 2 – You are currently at the Week 2 post
Week 3 – Baste and quilt
Week 4 – Bind

Prize for this Week

Our prize for this week is going to be a FREE PDF pattern. The winner can choose any of my patterns accept for the one we are using for this quilt along.

To be eligible for prizes:

– You must be following me @snugglebugstitching on Instagram and post progress pictures for the week on Instagram by Sunday at 5:00 PM Central Time. You must tag me @snugglebugstitching in your posts and use the #soundwavesbabyquiltqal and #soundwavesbabyquilt.

-I will announce the winner on Instagram and tag the lucky quilt alonger so that they know they’ve won. The winner will have one week to contact me to claim the prize. Any unclaimed prizes will be forfeited.