Tall Poppy sewalong 2

Making the first cuts

I’m so glad we’re doing this sewalong! Not only is it forcing me to make a repeat of one of my patterns, but it’s also making me do things in the proper order, which doesn’t happen very often.

In the pattern I note which quilts should have the borders cut first, but let’s face it, if you want to be completely sure you’re not going to have to join pieces later on, now is the time to cut them.

It also makes sense to do it now when you can use the hook holes along the selvedge as a bit of a cutting guide.

For every version of the pattern I’ve allowed a little extra length for all border and sashing pieces. It’s hard to be super-exact when sewing a lot of curved blocks together and it’s annoying when your sashing or borders come up short.

This is how I cut my borders and sashing…
On the floor, with the cutting mat underneath the fabric. I’m making the throw size so I got all four borders out of this width and even one of the long sashing pieces.

I have to confess that I wouldn’t normally have the patience to keep cutting the sashing as well – I’d be too keen to get into the fun bits, but I was good and did it this time.

Pictured below are my four border strips, two long sashing pieces and 12 short sashing pieces. They’re all now safely in a separate bag in my project box so I don’t accidentally cut into them for other piecing (yep, been there, done that).

Planning your fabric placement

If you haven’t already done it, now is also a good time to finalise your fabric placement. The Liberty fabrics I’m using are so old, they’re no longer available as image swatches online to use in EQ8. Instead I took a pic of each fabric on my green background and played around until I got a layout I liked.

From experience, I know that very directional fabrics (like the centre one in my top row) don’t work well on the reverse snowflake poppies. They look really messy behind that particular poppy head with its multiple pieces, as there’s no way to control the direction due to the way the block is constructed. So I’m avoiding putting that fabric in column two or 4 which are the ones done in reverse.

I’m also using seven different fabrics, rather than the six allowed for in the pattern, and my cutting is going to be tight, so I had to place one of the fabrics I had more yardage of, as the one to make three poppies from – all the other fabrics only get two.

One of my Instagram friends, Skye, suggested I need to call this a slowalong, and I like that idea, so if you want to add #tallpoppyslowalong to your posts we can find those participating. Also tag me @stitchandyarn so I can find them more easily and share your makes if you’re up for that.

A reminder, if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments below, or via Insta DM or email.

I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks to make some leaves!