I’ve seen a lot of economy blocks stove lately and inspired by @PrincessP I thought I’d give it a go. Lots of websites were doing it using a FFP method, some were just sewing directly and I had an idea of a different way of making them that I thought might be a lot faster.- being a card carrying nerd I had to do a trial, or three
1:FPP
2:sewing each piece on one at a time.
3: my way. I turned and pressed a 1/4 at the long edge of each triangle piece. Laid the first four down in the correct orientation (using a dab of a glue stick) then I topsewed each piece. Then repeated with the second set of triangles. I figured this was was just two continuous sewing lines and so should be faster right?
Oh so wrong!
Times for each method (with pros and cons)
1FPP- 8.5 minutes for the block. I didn’t trim after each seam and ironed pairs of triangles.
Hated this method, you are sewing blind-lots of opportunities for the blocks to be misaligned. You can’t chain piece, so you use a lot more thread. And you have to remove all the paper after, which is tedious and messy.
Pros: it was supposed to give better points, but tbh I didn’t see much difference. If anything the block was more wonky. (Red one below)
2: standard piecing 6.5 minutes this was pressing pairs of triangles rather than individually so speeded things up slightly.
Pros: fastest, you can see what you’re doing so the seams get properly aligned. You can chain piece.
Cons: more possibility of stretching the seams.
(This is the dark blue one below with the deer.)
3 and this is where my genius idea was proved to not be so genius and where I’m reminded that generations of refinement of techniques probably found the best way
My method took almost 12 minutes.
Pros, you can see the alignment and get it exactly as you want it. Very little thread waste.
Cons, slowest and there is a line of stitching visible on the block, I quite like this, but with lots of different colours of fabrics it might be distracting.
(Paper blue block, the final block was a repeat of the FPP because I forgot to time it!)
