Community Quilt Along – Week 4

Good morning. We're to week four of our Community Quilt Along, welcome. If this is the first time you're joining us, there are three more weeks that are available. If you'd like to go to either the website, Facebook, or to YouTube. You can find the Community Quilt Along, sponsored by National Quilt Circle.

So, week four, we're working on getting to the end of our project, or at least the the collection of everything that we've created, maybe creating rows and having an entire quilt top. So, that's what we're gonna address today. We do have some questions that I want to address from last week. And we had someone who asked about applique. So Donna, this is the answer for you.

I am a raw edge applique. So I am not gonna say I'm a perfectionist when it comes to that turning those edges with the needle and doing that beautiful classic kind of applique, but I'm gonna send you to a book by Kim Diehl. I've worked with her technique, I've done a block, so I can say I've done it. I liked it, it came out really beautifully. Kim Diehl applique.

It is the book is called "Simple applique." And her techniques are really useful and an end product that's beautiful. If you want to learn more about machine applique. I've done those kinds of videos for quilting quickly. So if you go to YouTube, you can find some there. There're ton of videos out there on machine applique.

So pick one, pick a couple pick up the techniques that you want and like and are comfortable with. And applique will then become a whole different realm of quilt blocks that you can create. And I think this is going to be our motto for the is to dream. We're dreaming about being outside of our homes dreaming about what's coming next. And it should all be positive.

Think positive, those quilt, quilt drops they are just waiting for us to come back and shop to our hurts content. So Donna, there's your answer about applique. I had a question about curved piecing. And curved piecing is another technique that takes a little bit of time to get used to. You would create blocks similar to this possibly a very classic curve.

So you have what some of us would call the Crust which is the outer portion of the curve and the inner pie shaped piece of the curve. But curves come in different sharpness it also. If you rushed to the beginning of the quilt along I was working on a quilt which is also curved piecing. In fact, the entire thing is curves. So this is the curve that I joined for all of the entire whole top.

So, real quick review of the technique for curved piecing. Some people will have you put a lot of pins in others we'll do a very streamlined version. And what I'm going to do is a more streamlined version. All those pins just get in my way. So what I'm doing, I'm taking the piece that looks like I usually call it the smile, the piece that curves up like this.

And I am going to fold in half and find the center. The center is important so that we all stretch and shift the entire curve. Now, the other piece I'm going to fold also that's the more mountain type piece that the piece that is shaped like this. So I'm putting just a little crease in there so that then I can match my centers. And I'm going to put the smile piece on top and I'm working it backwards.

So this is what it would look like for you. I would have it turned around for me, but I want from the camera or you to be able to see how I do this. I put on a tiny little bite of a pin in the seam allowance. This is a not a big bite into the fabric. It has some play to it.

So it has kind of a pivot point in that center. Then I take both ends and I'm going to manipulate those, matching up the outer corner here. If the pattern has been properly shaped, the templates have been properly shaped. The curve is engineered to fit one on top of the other. Engineering is kind of a big term.

All it means is, is drawn by the art, the graphic designer and the quilter designer so that the pieces will fit over the top of each other and the seam allowances will. If there were laid over the top and you can look through the seam allowances would be, the seams would be right on top of each other. And then simply take this to the machine. You start on one end of course, I leave the pin there until I get my needle down to take maybe one stitch then the needle comes out. Then I progress along and I manipulate this before I start to sew.

By using your fingers, you're matching up raw edges right here. And then just basically put it through the machine and let's do just a tad bit of sewing here. Then I drop my machine, right on the edge there. Take that little bit of a bite, take the pin out because we don't want to hit the pins. Damage the needle, damage the timing in our machines.

So, along that curve holding it with your fingers. If you need to adjust you come in and you kind of shift that fabric around. Don't worry, it looks like it's going to be a little bit bunchy but usually that kind of works as the way out as it gets to the center. I'm headed to have that central pin, take it out do the same thing again. Leave that curve coming out of the machine coming toward you kind of let it fall gracefully to the sewing machine bed.

Play with that fabric again I'm holding it with one hand pretty much here. I'm holding that fabric down and then drives, let that machine feed right along. Don't push, don't pull. If you need to make a fine adjustment as you approach the end as you get to that last pin, pull it out. Don't speed fast because then the machine will either waiver one side or the other and you'll get a wide seam allowance, just go slowly right off the end.

So there's red threads. So I don't know if you can pick it up or not. But the seam allowance there it comes close to getting a tuck, but not quite because if that seam allowance, everything's engineered properly it should open up, make a nice grease . So I'm going to finger press this. I would then take it to them, to the iron board and get that nice curve pressed out like that.

And then pressing my seams out in a way on this because that's the direction it kind of wants to go. So listen to the curve, usually out in a way in the curve, so that's perfusing. There are other videos that you can watch online if you actually search my name and curved piecing you'll probably find another one that might take a little bit more time to get through the curved piecing. But again, it adds another interest to your quilts. Straight lines are great applique is fine curves that can be a lot of fun and very addicting.

Okay, do we have some other questions here today? Elizabeth asks, how could you, or could you please tell us how to construct the finished quilt top? Not just the nine patches, but after that the process of putting all the parts together with a deck or with a sashing and so forth. So, the quilt top that I finished with the gray in it I'll bring in here. And if you've been working in your nine patches you've got those all created and maybe you've been working on some of the sashing also.

Because the sashing is actually a pieced sashing in this project. It has a two and a half inch strip in the middle one and a half inch strips on the outside. And when it's all put together it kind of makes a little frame around each of our nine patches. But it's not that those little narrow pieces are added right to the nine patch. There's a process of creating that sashing.

So that you can put the quilt top together and create a really neat effect where you stepped back from it afterwards. So, here is the process. You've created your nine patches hopefully gotten them pressed nice and crisp and they're ready to go. The fun part is if you're doing scrappy is to arrange them. So maybe you've had them laid out on the floor you've laid them on the bed.

Possibly you have a design wall or something that you can put out or put your blocks on. And, if it needs to be tucked away, it can be easily folded up. It's a little way, otherwise you can leave on the wall. Might just start with So it's very easy. Then as you make pieces to put them up on the wall and step back and see her accomplishment for the day.

And all about how being able to visually see that I've actually done something for the day, okay. These are the sashing units you're going to create in the pattern. And you have to make quite a few of these because they fit within the row on each side of your nine patch. And I'll lay some out here. So visually you're going to create a row that has a lot of these, and they're going to alternate across your quilt.

So in rows, you're going to create this. Then you're going to create another row and that row has a four and a half inch square in it. And then it has some more of those pieced sashing on units. Now, some may ask in the pattern, it was written and taught, and you were instructed to cut individual pieces like this. And if you are making a very scrappy quilt you will want to cut these individually.

If you were going to make something that was all the same, say in my quilt, I did use the gray and the white over and over in the same place you could create strip sets. If that's something in your wheelhouse if not stick with just cutting pieces. This is a lot more, there's an accuracy to this, that's going to help you in the long run. It's gonna force you to get your piecing and your cutting to be very nice and crisp. So, the second role that you're going to be creating as this square, the piece sashing and another square.

Now, remember what we talked about in one of the of the other weeks. We talked about trying to be as accurate as you could, when you're making your nine patches because these seam allowances you want to have this block be six and a half inches long. Because it's going to match up against the six and a half inch piece here. So if, when you go to put these together this doesn't quite match this. You're going to have to do a little fudge and a little math, possibly.

The idea is that you want these to be the same link. So, strive for that okay? When it comes to putting those sashing pieces together some tips on creating those so that they don't get distorted because this is what you're trying to achieve. You're trying to get the three pieces put together and keep them in a rectangle. You don't want them to become distorted into kind of a diamond shape or almost like that these end up way longer and slid from the center, you want them to match up.

So, one thing that I did find when I was actually sewing these myself. Because I did have some shifts when I did my first and I thought, hmm, what's going on? Think about the process. What is the machine doing? What am I doing?

So as I lay these right sides together and I sit down to the machine. If the angle I'm sitting at it looks like those are matched, but they're not quite. I need to actually look down on top of them to make sure they're matched up square. And then make sure that as I move it to the sewing machine that also stays together nice and square. Sometimes just the shift of getting it from our cutting table to the sewing machine.

I don't know, but there's something that happens that things can become distorted. So then your nice even quarter-inch seam. Making sure your cut edges always stay aligned along the radian sign. Stitch all the way through. Then making sure that bottom corner, that bottom edge that they're the same length again there.

So that the machine is pushing one piece over the other. Should people get, if they're close accurately the quarter inch, or that the two bars should be the exact same length when they're done. So I'm going to finger press this. And then you'll be able to see that indeed this end is a nice straight line and this end is a straight line. So that's what you're trying to achieve.

On these, I pressed all my seam allowances toward the towards the outer edge was just kind of... I was just used to pressing towards the outer edge. And it doesn't really matter too much which direction you're pressing those because those bars only match up against the square. There are going to be no opposing seams that you're going to run into at that point. If you rather you can press toward the darker fabric, which is the center.

But as I said, there's not going to be anything for opposing seams in that area. So don't worry about those as much. Now, when it comes to joining the row here, there is something I want to show you putting this stashing strip against the nine patch here. We're going to sew down this edge. Now, as I sow that again, if you look for square on top of it, make sure that top edge is aligned.

I'm going to sow straight down the edge keeping that quarter inch is possible, straight as I possibly can. The one thing that can happen as you approach your nine patch underneath is the double-check. Some machines we'll want to kind of force your seams to split open. And if you've pressed them in one direction there's a reason why you want them there to be flat. So make sure that as you approach that it stays flat on the back side.

Now again, the second seam making that I could tell on this one, that it was flat. So I'm going to go ahead and finish out the edge end of that scene. Oops got that there. Okay now, when I open this up now which way do I press the seams? That's the good question at this point.

A lot of times people will say press toward the darker fabric which would mean I would have to go this way. But that would mean I would take both of these seam allowances and have to force them backward on themselves which is going to be, they're going to refuse. They're not going to like it going that direction. So in this case press your seam allowances toward the narrow bar whichever whatever color you're going to make it in my case here is the light. So I'm going to finger press that just so you can see that on the back this is then pressed toward that it's least resistance.

And if I do get some show there it's not the end of the world. I'm going to be quilting and it's going to be utility quilt. So that's the direction that I would press those seam allowances. And then continue in that manner all along as you create that row. And again, over here then the seam allowances would press toward the white.

When you go to put these pieces together in rows. Then we have another conundrum, another situation because this seam, we're going to join those. We're going to have no problem here because there's seam allowances are a foot pressing towards the light again, pressing that direction, they'll lay nice and flat. But then we get over to this seam and we have to make a decision. We've pressed this one going toward the light.

So this one is going to have to buckle, it's going to have to go the other direction. This is what's one of the the issues that magazine writers get into. Do we tell people which way to press our seams? And if we do, we're going to sometimes get into a situation where something's going to have to go, something's going to have to give. So we're going to least resistance, least resistance and we're going to have some resistance.

So pressing those in that direction is totally fine. It had no, no problem, when I went to put the whole entire quilt together. That way I'll have an opposing seam here and I can get those nice crisp points and join. So the light block just sits right on the outside corners of my quilt. Okay, so that's constructing our block.

Deborah asked. Do you like to use Fusible Batting and does it stay in place? I have used fusible batting a few times. Not very many, usually on something fairly small. Because the hardest part for me is getting those layers and the batting to the ironing board and being able to fuse them in place.

If it's something that large is something hard to tackle at the ironing board. So the only time I've used it as on table runners or wall hanging, something small that I could tackle at my ironing board and be able to get that to lay out nicely. And yes, I've had good luck getting that to fuse nicely. It's a very light fuse. It holds in place enough so that you can do your machine quilting and hadn't have a lot of success.

So, but there are different brands. So try out different ones and see what you like the best because it does come down to personal preference sometimes. Sherry on Facebook says, I love your quilt hanging in the background. That's a pineapple quilt. It was done with Creative Grids Trim Tool.

And I had a blast putting that together. I had been saving up blues and turquoises and purple batiks for a very, very long time. I actually mixed those batiks then with white on white as the background. So that's scrappy there also. And I researched a lot of different techniques for making a pineapple block.

And came to the conclusion that I kind of like the Trim Tool because I only have to cut strips. I don't have to cut weird angles I don't have to tearing paper off. And so it went together very nicely. In fact, just a little teaser, I have been working on a small version. There are tool, two different trim tools that they make.

And the smaller one is the one I've been working on the last couple of days. And these blocks will finish six inches. So going a lot of, lot more traditional in my colorway I went to kind of a brick red and cream. And the creams can have a little bit of pattern to them just for texture but it'll be fun to see how this one turns out. Sometimes when you get into making one style of quilt you make a whole series of quilts, because it's just that much fun.

Okay, couple of other questions, Vicky. She liked the simplifying the curve I do too. I have seen people try to do demos with all kinds of pins in it. And to me it just looks like you're ready to get poked and that's not good. And I come to quilting from a garment sewing background.

So the years of doing set in sleeves kind of kicked in because in garment sewing. The portion of the body is the scoop, the smile and the sleeve itself is the hill that you put together. And so all those years of forage kind of come into play. And those curves there's no gathers, no pleats that's simple. So I tried to boil it down to the easiest simplest motion that we could use just our fingers to do about halfway through, stop take a breath, remember to breathe.

And position your hands get those edges matched up one over the top the other and then finish the curve and not make it so scary. Okay, Pat has a question or a comment. What a great way to keep your ironing board handy. I have actually a portable one here at the sewing center that I can take to class with me. So it's a small one, right next door.

My big board is behind me turn that's covered in turquoise right now. But I do like having that big board to be able to lay things out on, to do pressing maybe seams open and working on things like that. So, the little one's nice, but especially right now since we're kind of restricted to our homes and we don't get up and get as much energy or walking in movement. This is kind of a cheap for video. Get up and go to there ironing board.

Even if you have to put it in another brew that makes you get up from the sewing machine. Because we can sit at the sewing machine for half an hour, or 45 minutes even an hour and just sow and not get up and move, which is not good for us. So get up and move. There were times when my kids were little and I had I kept ironing board in the basement but the kids were outside playing and I needed to be upstairs to see them. So I had my sewing machine upstairs, my ironing board in the basement.

Here at my 10,000 steps those days. Okay, Judy asks. I use a tough one foot. I'm not sure if it's the best when walking foot on the sandwich. Okay a tough one, but if you have any issues with drag on your fabric, a Teflon foot can help.

It has a little more slick of a surface. And so if you find that helpful as you're putting your fabrics through the machine. By all means, use that a walking foot always a walking foot when you're sandwiching or doing any machine quilting. Learn from my mistake. When I first got into quilting and I was doing my very first things that I wanted to quilt myself.

I had a different machine, a very simple older style that did not have a walking foot. And I thought, well, this is only a table, right? Or a wall hanging, it won't make that much difference. Well, I started out across my project doing just in the ditch because that's what a lot of us do when we're starting out quilting. By the time I got to the other end of it the top was a half inch longer in the back.

And it totally distorted the entire quilt top. So, that walking foot that you get to you have on your machine, or you can purchase for your machine. Let's see if I can find my off hand here. It's like a talk about, with a visual. So walking foot, some machines come with a built-in integrated walking foot, those are wonderful.

Some of us don't have those kinds of machines. So a walking foot looks up something like this that has a larger piece at the back. It has an arm like this that goes around the needle take up on your machine. And the bottom has teeth on it. Like the feed dogs of your machine.

The reason for using this then once it's attached to your machine. Is that just instead of having just the feed dogs pull the fabric, the layer through the machine. The presser foot, this walking foot has teeth on it too. So it grabs top and the bottom comes up and it's feeding both layers through evenly. So you don't have that distortion that shift of fabric because when you put bounding in between.

You've now created a kind of like a marshmallowy layer in there, just enough puff that one can slide out from the other. And that's not what we want. We worked so hard to be so accurate in our piecing in our cutting and our pressing. And then when we go to layer it and if we don't have it either based in well enough or we're not using a walking foot we're going to get that distortion shift. And then all your hard work is for not.

So I'm walking foot is vital. If you're going to be doing any straight line quilting on your domestic sewing machine, otherwise you're going to need a free motion foot which is like a little hopper foot. So that you can lower feed dogs and do and you then drive the fabric through the machine. So, okay. Question or a comment from Kiran.

When you're finishing the quilt and placing the back to the front. Do you make your own bias tape? And what do you like to do? So, I think we're talking about binding here. And binding is that outer edge that we finished after our quilt is layered and quilted together, layers are all attached.

We need to finish that outer edge. And so I can grab a strip up. We quilters always have extra binding leftover. We tend to create more than we need. And so we always, if nobody wants to throw pieces of fabric away, so of course there's leftover binding.

I do make my own binding from a matching fabric. Usually either it matches the outer border of my quilt or it's an accent color from within my quilt. And when I was first learning to make the binding from my quilt, the person who instructed me used the two and a half inch width. So this is a two and a half inch with the fabric. Some people use two and a quarter, very traditional usually not too much smaller than that, unless you're working on a mini quilt, really tiny, tiny quilts.

And then you might go down to two inches but a two and a half to two and a quarter inch strip. I cut mine straight of grain. Some people like to cut there's bias. Bias is used when you're working on curves on your quilt the outer edge of your curve of your quilt like on my Apple core quilt. Those are going to probably have to have, it's going to have to bias binding which means it's going to have a little bit more give to it.

It's cut diagonally across the fabric. And that will help me ease the curve. But if you were working on a quilt, like the one we're doing for the quilt along. You can cut straight of grain binding and create your binding strips by linking them together. I was looking to see there's gotta be a joint in here someplace, here we go.

They're joined with a diagonal seam and you can you can search for quick videos on how to join binding like this diagonal seam. And then pressed right a wrong size together preparing that for the outer edge of your quilt. And I always apply my to the front of my quilt so that then I can roll it to the back. Some people refer to finish their quilts by machine and that's totally fine to do it that way. I tend to want to do it by hand.

So I'm applying it to the front of my quilts and then it will be rolled around to the back. Of course, this is not the binding, I would use it for this quilt. But I probably have enough gray to make matching great binding for the outside edge of my quilt. Okay, we've got another question. Oh, a fabulous picture of a scrappy quilt.

Oh, with a blue background and lots of blues and reds. Nancy posted in the gallery here is my quilt from Community Quilt Along use since it's for a young man's birthday gift how perfect? I was actually thinking that this quilt may end up going to young gentlemen too. Because of it's very angular, very clean, very modern and none of the fabrics and this one at least there wasn't a Paisley or a flower to be had. So, we have really great feedback from you guys.

There was one thing that I teased about in one of the very first episodes of our quilt along and that was learning about your seam ripper. Now, inevitably, when you're sowing together pieces like this, say for instance when I'm sewing these pieces together. The right and the wrong side of the grunge fabric is very, very subtle. And to be totally honest with you what I sow in some of these together. I found that I had actually some three pieces of fabric together.

Because when I cut them in pairs, they stuck together and I currently three in the sandwich together, so I had to take it apart. But how do you take pieces apart without getting them distorted? And it's frustrating. I know as a kid, when I was learning to sow. My mom would always take and go here, I'll do that for you.

But right now we're stuck in our house. So we have no one to come and do it for us, there's no quilt ferry. But after years of using a seam ripper, mind you, I own a lot of these. And I do plan here for a living, even though I, I sold a lot. I also make my share of mistakes.

I learned what the red little bead on the seam ripper was for. Now, in normally when you take, when you've made put together something that isn't what you want, you need to take it apart. You come in and you make cut like every fourth stitch or so with the seam ripper and take it apart that way. Or in the old garment sewing days we would just pull on it and then go in and cut threads and distort the block all together. What you can do instead is come in and just cut the first couple of stitches so that you can kind of have access to the inside here.

Come in, then placing this with a bead side down, insert it so that you're, I mean you're going to actually catch that seam allowance in or that seam in the kind of a crotch area, the in between. So the red bead is it's at the bottom. And if you just simply push it cuts all the stitches perfectly. Now, no one ever taught me that really would have liked that when I put on a border that was like 60 or 70 inches long. And I put it on upside down and I took it all off and I went to put it back on.

Got it done again and looked at it the second time I had done it wrong two times in a row. I needed this technique. So once again, go in and just cut the first couple of stitches. So you have access to the seam. So you can insert your seam ripper, pointy pit, a portion up bead down.

And the bead goes under the stitches. And with just a little bit of tension but unzips the seam. Now, there is a caution spot. If, when you're going across there you're going to come up to a seam intersection. For example, if I were going to take apart this seam when I get to this intersection slowdown.

Because you don't want the tip of your seam ripper to catch and cut a hole, you may have to pick a couple of stitches and then it'll slide again and basically unzip your seam. And it's nice and neat it does leave a little bit of pause behind but a lot faster than picking seams. Okay, we've got the bunch of, of things here going on. Wendy from, it says hi from the UK. Hi Wendy?

We're glad you joined us today. She's downloaded the pattern from the Community Quilt Along, and has been using forever growing stacks of scraps. Perfect, this is the perfect scrap quilt because we as quilters, we bought that fabric. We paid good money for it. We are not going to throw it away, at least not in my house.

Very good, when I try to use a walking foot, the fabric on the bottom bunches up, and I have to rip it out. Why is this happening in what could be could she be doing wrong? It may not be you, it might be just the the walking foot. Double-check to make sure that the walking foot is the proper shank for the, your machine. Number one, because if it's one that came with your machine or is it the same brand as your machine, it should be fine.

There are times when that first old sewing machine I had to buy a universal foot. Which means it's gonna work, but it's not going to work. It works some, it wasn't the best. So it was time to invest in a better machine, at that point. It shouldn't bunch up.

That's interesting. Make sure that the feed dogs and everything underneath your the needle plate is clean. There's a possibility that there's either a built up thread or built up fuzz underneath there, causing that to happen. If it keeps being persistent I would take it to your local quilt shop. See if they have a repair person or someone who can help you maybe diagnose what might be going on at that point.

Because it should, it should feed at the bottom is evenly as the top. So if it's the thread bunching up it may have be a tension issue, but otherwise, hmm that's that's concerning. I'm not sure exactly why, I wish I knew more about that one. Connie asks, why do you not lock or backstage at the beginning of end of your stitching line? That is a very good question because coming from a garment sewing background.

I used to when I first started. But in quilting, number one. If you're coming since you're using the words, backstage or stage. I'm thinking you're coming from a garment sewing background or at least information wise. So make sure that your stitch length is set a little shorter on my machine is set at 2.0, which is a shorter stitch length in garment sewing.

Because if you have long stitches you're going to get that pop at the end of your seam with a shorter stitch line, you don't get that pop. It's not as loose, the stitches are closer together. So there are a little bit more embedded. And, in quilting, whenever we're sewing a seam. Whereas you're crossing it with another seam which basically locks it in place.

So therefore we don't have to do that backstage. When you do backstage and if you do backstage. You're going to make it very difficult for yourself to ever have to tear out a seam because there's a lot of stitches it's going to damage the fabric at that point that edge of the fabric. So the nice part is you don't have to do the backstage make sure that your stitch length is set at a shorter stitch length at 2.0. Which is I think refers to somewhere between a 10 and 12 stitches per inch.

In garment sewing, we might be up closer to eight inches or eight stitches per inch. So, make sure your stitch like this set short and remember that all of your scenes, usually in quilting are crossed by another scene, which then locks that stitch. So you don't get that pump happening there. Okay, so the last thing that I wanted to talk about, was now this is just a photo of the portion of the quilt that I made. And when we read instructions we tend to read top to bottom left to right.

That's how our brains are patterned. So, when you look at the diagram for this quilt on how to put it together? We usually start to read top and I'm going to do it. So you can see this properly top and we go left to right like this across our quilt thinking, okay I'm going to create this row. And then I'm going to create this one and this and we have all the roles maybe joined.

'Cause that's how our diagram and our patterns are written four rows create rows. But then it says, join rows. Which is kind of like, okay, where do I start? And when I first started quilting I would take row one and row two and join them. And then grab row three, make sense one, two, three.

Put three on and stitch across one, two, three, four as next. Join that one on there. And pretty soon I've got this really long large quilt top that I'm dragging through adding one row at a time. But there's a better way think in pairs. So as you start your quilt row one and row two.

Join those two together, then put it on the design wall or the floor or wherever you're laying them out. Take number three and four and put them together press get them all looking pretty lay them underneath one and two. Now come back, what am I doing next? Five and six, join those. So I'm creating pairs and then you can do that through the entire quilt.

So you have pairs all the way down now go back and join pairs together. So it's just four rows together. So four and four, depending on how big your quilt is. Then you've only worked on say four rows of that at a time. And now if you have four and four that might need your entire quilt top that it may only be eight rows or seven rows so maybe a four and a three, you have left.

Guess what? The only time you have to drag the entire quilt through or this very large piece of the machine is to join those last two rows two or two large portions together instead of dragging the big quilt top, which gets tiresome. And we look at and go, I'll do it later. Which isn't a good thing, let's finish our quilts. So next time you go to work on a quilt.

And if you haven't done this before, think of rows in pairs. Join them together like a community. Then go on to the next neighborhood and join those together and the next, and then go back and join. So you only have to drag the entire quilt top through the machine, that one last time. It's not quite as much to work on at once.

Okay, I think we have exhausted all of our topics. There are so many more things we could cover and eventually we learn as we go along. So hopefully I've picked up some tips. Some ideas here had a chance to step back take a break from the world, turn off that TV and the radio and not listen to all the news up there and just enjoy the process of working with your fabrics and your quilts. So, the thing that I want to give a shout out to next because we don't have another opportunity to join is there is an opportunity for you.

National Closer Circle has a challenge coming up very soon and it's called baskets and blooms. And it is a bright, vibrant, fun project. If you've never done basket blocks or flower blocks these are going to be some really fun things for you to do. It begins April 24th. So look for that so that you can sign up for the challenge and get all the instructions and things.

There is also a Facebook page for that. So you'll have your own little community working on baskets and blooms. And it's sponsored by Baby Lock. So Toby Lischko is the designer. You will learn a ton from her.

She is a very thorough instructor. So for the Community Quilt Along I'm glad you joined me. Have fun, stay safe and peace.