Tall Poppy sewalong 3
Leaves, leaves and more leaves
Are you ready? Let’s get our curve on!
There’s only one thing I want to point out before I hand over to a curve master and that is to make sure you check which way your curve is facing before cutting directional fabrics.
In each set of leaves you need two left-pointing leaves and two right-pointing leaves. You can easily just spin them after cutting with a tossed repeat, but with a directional fabric it really matters which way you cut them – see below. If I’d cut those all as left-pointing leaves then the two on the right would have had their lines running horizontal after I rotated the leaf to be right-pointing.
Now onto the fun stuff!
No-pin curves
How lucky are we that Jenny Haynes has recently featured on Janome TV (click the play arrow on the image below) demonstrating her no-pin curves technique. I’m a big fan and it’s how I sew all my curves now – so much faster than using pins.
Plus, the Tall Poppy pattern is built on Jenny’s templates (whether you’ve purchased the acrylic or are making your own from the template in the pattern) so you’ll be able to get the same results.
And yes, press the seams open!
New tip
When I made this quilt the first time, I got a bit frustrated that I still didn’t have my leaf units perfectly aligned once they were together, so this time I’ve tried something a little different and I’m much happier with the results.
Below are four untrimmed leaves ready to make into a unit.
Instead of trimming the leaves on all four sides and then sewing them together, I’ve just trimmed them down on the inside seams (so two sides of each block) as highlighted below.
Then I sew all the leaves together and do my final trim of the outside seams. I do that with a square ruler, making sure the 1/4” line is where the points on the top leaves start and the 7 1/4” line hits the base of the bottom leaves – so much neater. I’m sure it will make sewing all the units together easier too.
So there you have it folks, my extra leaf tips.
I only have about 40 more leaves to sew now! Lucky this is a slow sewalong. Happy sewing and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks to start a poppy unit.
As always, get in touch if you need to ask any questions.
