The Summer Sun Quilt Block with Janome’s Perfect Pair

The Janome memory craft 550E and the award-winning M7 Continental are the perfect pair when wanting to make a quilt accent with embroidery. The Memory Craft 550 E is Janome's largest standalone embroider machine, has the largest hoop size of eight by 14 inches, features an extra white extension table and comes with a built-in embroidery design library featuring 180 different designs and six different letter fonts. If you're wanting to personalize your own design, they can be easily imported through a USB and edited using the machines on-screen editing functions. In addition to the many designs, the library also has several fun built-in projects. The M7 Continental has a seven inch HD color touch screen to help you easily navigate to the stitches and settings you want to use. And if you're not sure which one is best or how to proceed with a certain function, download Janome's AcuSpark app, which will provide all the details you'll need. The M7 also features an intelligent feeding system which keeps the feed dogs down and out of the way allowing you to easily position your fabric. And it has a computerized needle plate removal so you can easily switch between the different needle plate options. With one of the largest workspaces offered on any machine and an extension table that takes it to 15 by 27 inches, it's perfect for any quilting project. With the perfect pair of the Memory Craft 550 E, and the M7 Continental, we can make a summer sun quilt block with a beautiful embroidered center. Let's get started. With the large hoop size options on the Memory Craft 550E, we can easily embroider the 8 1/2 inch square that will be the block center. Now I started with a larger square, around 11 inches, selected my favorite design from the built-in library, hooped my stabilized fabric and embroidered the design onto the center of the square. We're going to start by making some half square triangles. Now to make a half square triangle, you're going to need your 2 7/8 inch squares, and your two different shades of orange. On the lighter of the two, you want to draw a diagonal line from corner the corner. Now we want to place our two squares, right sides together, and make sure that all of our edges are aligned. I want to stitch one quarter inch on both sides of the drawn line. And now you can see we've stitched one quarter inch on both sides of the drawn line. And now we want to cut apart along this drawn line. Now we're going to open it up and press and you have a half square triangle. Now we need to make some flying geese. You're going to be making flying geese in multiple colors. So I'm just going to show you how to in one color and you're going to repeat that process. You need one of your 2 1/2 inch by 4 1/2 inch rectangles and two of your 2 1/2 half inch squares. On the back on the wrong side of your 2 1/2 inch squares, you're going to again draw a line from corner to corner. Once you have your lines drawn, we're going to work with one square at a time. You want to take and align your square and your rectangle right sides together. Put the square on one side of the rectangle so that the line that you drew goes from the lower corner to the upper center. And now I'm going to take this and I'm going to stitch. Now this, I want to stitch directly on the line that I just drew. Stich on my drawn line all the way off of that point. You're going to press your square back up along that line you just stitched. Again, I'll just finger press for now. I can go ahead and trim my seam allowance to one quarter inch, and then press this again, if needed. And now I'm halfway done. Take our other square that we've marked, place it on the opposite side of that rectangle. Again, right sides together, making sure that the line that you drew goes from the center middle down to the lower corner, and stitch right on that drawn line. Again, I find it easier to start at the middle center and stitch my way out. Press first, then trim. And then you've got your completed flying geese in this color combination. You're going to repeat to make the needed number of flying geese in this color combination. Then repeat the exact same process to make them using the cream 2 1/2 inch by 4 1/2 inch rectangles, and these two, 2 1/2 inch squares. You're going to make it in this color combination. And then also this one as well. So you can see that they are sort of opposite. Now with those squares and rectangles, you're going to be making what is called a corner unit. So for the corner unit, you are going to need your 2 1/2 inch cream square and your 2 1/2 orange square, and then another 2 1/2 inch by 4 1/2 inch cream rectangle. You're going to stitch your squares together first, then stitch your squares onto the rectangle. And you're going to do it in two different orientations. One is going to end up like this and one is going to end up like this. Then once you have your corner units, now it's time to just put our pieces together. We're going to start off by sewing two of our flying geese together into a pair. So here I have my flying geese. I have sewn them together into a pair and just pressed my seam to one side. Next, I'm going to sew together another one of my flying geese, a different color combination one, with two of my half square triangles. And I again pressed my seams to one side. I've chosen to press towards my half square triangles. Now we need to put these two together, right, like so, and you should see how your colors align. Now, what I'm pinning is I want to make sure that this seam line here is right in the center of my flying geese. So it should be right at this intersection. So I want to make sure that that is aligned first. And then I'm going to go ahead and put a pin in right there. And I'm going to do the same thing at the other two intersection points. Now, when I'm stitching, I want to be able to see sort of the X marks the spot intersection right here of where the tip of my flying geese is. So I want to be able to see that, so I want this side up. But there's obviously one on this side as well. So what I'm going to do is actually stitch just this one little section, about an inch, right through this flying geese point so I know that I'm going to be going directly through that X. Right like so, make sure I hit right through that X where I want to go. Just a couple stitches is all you need. Go ahead and take it off. You can see, I have a straight line going right through the point of that flying geese. That's what you're looking for. Now you can go ahead and stitch the remainder of the seam. And on this side, we now have the two Xs to guide us. Our two X marks the spot, and we now have this straight line. So as long as I stitch directly on this straight line, I know I'm going to have all three of my points of my flying geese perfectly lined up. And now you would take this and give it a good press as well. Again, checking to make sure that all of your points are perfect and that you haven't lost any. You have a good one right here. Good one right here. Good one right here. Go ahead and give this a press, and then you're going to repeat to make four total of these matching rows. So again, once you have yours finished, you're going to add your corner units to both sides. When you line up your corner units, you want to make sure that you have the cream on the outsides, and that the orange squares are on the inside towards your other pieces that you've assembled. Now, you're going to have two short units and two longer units. Sew the shorter units to these sides of your 8 1/2 inch square first, doesn't matter if it's to the top and bottom or the sides, just do those first. Then go ahead and add on your remaining two rows, which are going to be the ones that have your corner units. Once you've done that, and you have your completed block. The block finishes at 16 inches. And of course it has this beautifully embroidered eight inch center that we've done on the Memory Craft 550 E. And then of course the rest of the quilt block was assembled using the M7 Continental. The final personal touch to add to any quilting project is a label. And that is something that can be made on either the 550 E or the M7. I'm going to make mine on the M7. With several different alphabet fonts to choose from, built-in decorative stitches and symbols, the label is easy to create using the M7. What you include on your quilt label is up to you, but I recommend adding the quilt name, your name, when you made it, and maybe even who you made it for. Using the large screen is easy to type out your label and essentially see it before it stitches. Once you stitch it out, fold under the raw edges and give it a good press. Then it's ready to stitch to your quilt back, either by hand, or of course using the M7 Continental. For your next quilting project accented with some beautiful embroidery, try out the perfect pair of Janome's Memory Craft 550 E and the M7 Continental.