First off, I hope everyone is having an enjoyable holiday season.
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Every Christmas a few of the gifts I give are hand made. I have a somewhat large extended family, so not all gifts can be handmade. I also come from a family that loves handmade gifts so whoever gets the handmade gifts is particularly pleased. This year I made a lace scarf for my remaining sister, socks for a niece (only 1 got finished but the other will get done soon), and for another niece a quilted pillow.
For this pillow I had to do a partial seam around the middle square. First time I'd ever done a partial seam. Follow me below the orange squiggle on why and how this is done.
To begin with, the pillow was a gift to a niece who loves autumnal colors. I'm not always as comfortable with them. However, the center of the pillow was a first Saturday project at our LQS, Stitching On State, in Hampshire, IL. They provided the fabric for the background and leaves. The only thing I changed was the center square was supposed to match the background and I wanted it to stand out to show off the twirling stems of the leaves. Also the red heart embroideries are my idea.
Each of the first Saturday classes usually has one new technique. This one was sewing partial seams.
Partial seams are used when seams need to be done around a radius, such as the center square above, when the strips that attach to the center square are longer than the center square.
In the example above, the leaf squares were all done as a unit, so they would extend considerably past the center 2" square. To do a partial seam, you begin with the center and any of the longer pieces that will be attached to it. You do a seam joining the center piece to the longer outside, but the seam is only sewn part way across -- from the outside edge to the middle of the smaller center square. This concept seems more difficult in words than it is visually. There are lots of good websites that show partial seems. A video that I used to review how this is done for this project is below. They showed us how to do this in class, but I needed a refresher to get it done right.
One additional point with this project: when your total seam is 2", and the partial is just 1", it is easy when you are twisting things around to get all the other seams done, to pull that 1" seam out. (Can you guess how I know this?) It could be an idea to double sew that 1" if you have a partial seam that short.
Now, what sort of quilting did you do for Christmas? Time to show and tell and brag!!