A while back I was telling you about the problems I was having joining together the klosjes. I asked Crispy of Hand-Piecing with Crispy how she would press the seams. She asked me to post some photos of the two different ways that I’ve tried and so here they are:
Is one of these preferable to the other? Or would you press them under and over as you go round the centre. I’d really like to know how you would tackle this.
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I may have to make one and try pressing it with a swirled seam at the seam intersections – but that may not work as there are an odd number (3) of seams coming together at each of 4 spots…. Here is an online tutorial and picture http://cuttopieces.blogspot.com/2010/05/tutorial-on-making-nine-patch-block.html.
My entire trip around the world quilt has the seams pressed with swirled seam intersections and it came out nice and flat.
I don’t have a problem doing that in the case of 9 patch but this is proving difficult when you sew four of these together because then you have 8 seams converging.
If you look at the front of the blocks that you have shown above, the one with the seams pressed into the centre will make the centre block slightly higher and therefore become the focus. With the one with the seams pressed out, the centre will be slightly lower so the focus becomes the surrounding fabrics.
I prefer the look of the first one, but the 2nd one always lies flatter for me.
Byee
I agree with you Chérie
The rule of thumb is to press towards the dark fabric so that you avoid having the seam allowance create a shadow around the light fabric.
With this design there are always going to be problems when the blocks are put together … too many seams in the corner, but easier to sort out when pieced by hand because the seams are not stitched to the end. You are ahead on that point, so join them together before you press … the best thing about hand piecing is not having to press until the top is together.
Judy B
Either way you’ve done so far has a double set of seam allowances on the same side somewhere. If you “twirl” them you never have that situation, but always have one set of seam allowances on every side of a join. Much easier to stitch through when quilting, either by hand or machine.
I’m an over/under type gal and don’t play by the “press towards the dark rule”….it’s too limiting. You may not always get to do a perfect swirl but sometimes just pressing back the corner of the top fabric is enough to reduce the bulk. I would press like you have in the second picture and then press the top & bottom of the center square towards the square. This will reduce the bulk in the corners.
Crispy
Isn’t that what I did in the first one or am I being dense.? 🙂