Pacific Quilt and a Point Matching Tutorial

Took almost a day of off and on trimming, but got all the flying geese tamed into accuracy and laid them out on my sewing room floor with the background pieces.

Assembling the geese into rows with the background fabric is quick and pretty easy, but sewing the four rows into a block has a tricky place where the top of one goose joins the corner seam of the one above it.

After a few rips on the first block, fewer on the second, I figured out how to pin this to make it work. No rips on this green one!

This is how I'm doing it:

Each row gets a good press (I know it's controversial, but I like steam and I do press rather than iron -- there's a big difference!) with the seam allowances away from the triangle points.

This is the way the rows will line up.

I stick a pin right through the intersection on the top piece.

Then stick the same pin through the intersection on the bottom piece, in this case, the point at the top of the goose.

Keeping the pin as straight as possible,

I put a pin sideways through everything. That seems to ensure an accurate join while keeping the seam allowances on the bottom piece flat. It also helps if you use a fine pointy needle for piecing: I'm using a Schmetz Microtex Sharp 80/12 with Mettler Silk Finish 100% cotton 60 weight thread.

And there we go! This is turning out to be more fun than I thought it would be!