Old Town Aftermath

 So, my teeny tiny HSTs obsession was well fed with the piecing of the Old Town quilt. And regular sized HSTs as well!

And extra Flying Geese, and triangles and strips of various widths. What will I do with them?  For certain, I promise I will not be making a back out of them. Maybe a matching pillow or something like that?

Border #3 and Done

 

Border #3 for the Old Town mystery quilt is pieced squares, alternating red and white/neutrals. There are a lot of intersections to try and match up with the four-patches in the second border so I pinned each and every one. 

The majority of the intersections matched up on the first side, so I did the same with the other three sides.

All of them worked, each border fit on pretty much perfectly, I was really happy about that.

A lot of ironing to do.

And then stay-stitching around the entire thing. Gosh, it's hard to sew "not-quite 1/4" after doing this whole quilt concentrating on doing and exactly 1/4". 

And there it is, all done! Now I'm looking for a title and then I'll have some backing and binding to be made. So it doesn't count as a "quilt finish" yet, but it's a quilt top finish and goes into the finishing category for me.

Border #2 Done

 

The second border for the Old Town mystery quilt is comprised of a whole lot of red and neutral/white four-patches.

I didn't have a lot of trouble having these borders fit, which for such a long and pieced border was sort of amazing to me.

Usually I have some hassle with that, but not this time. I guess I followed the directions or something?

Looks pretty good, but needs some ironing.

Definitely time for some ironing!

Yes, good.

There's the whole thing! I love it. I've always enjoyed the look of a checkerboard border, and now I've finally made one, hurray! Okay, on to the final border...

Border #1 Done

 

I got the last two sides of the first border sewed on to the Old Town quilt center, so it was time to iron them.

It's a bit hard to see the border's edge when it's up on the white design wall, but I like the look of the quilt so far. And most of the points stayed pointy which I'm taking as a win. Now on to the other two pieced red and white borders...

Border #1

Time for some Old Town bordering, but first I had to press the sewn together rows that make up the quilt center.then it was on to doing some stay stitching all around the pieced quilt center.

It takes a while to sew allll the way around but I did it. Along the way I noticed some popped seams so I fixed those. Hopefully this step of stay-stitching works to prevent more of that.

There’s the first border sewn on! Now to do the other 3 sides.

Completed Central Old Town

 

I'm feeling like this blog has turned into all Old Town all the time, but that's just how it goes on a project like this. 

The studio assistant is wondering when it's ever going to be over!

It's a lot of time to sew something like this together. I know, duh, of course we already know that. 

Even though I'm steadily getting closer and closer to finishing this project, I think I'm feeling the pull to pull focus and work on one of my remaining UFO 2025 challenge projects.  

Especially when I get interrupted by messages like this from my sewing machine. Thankfully that was just a turn the machine on and off again kind of message.

But that concentrated effort has led to this! The central part of the quilt is now put together. 💪👍👏🙌🎉🎊 Now moving on to getting the three borders attached for a truly completed quilt top.

Last Two Columns

I spent a little time sewing the pieced sashings onto the remaining blocks to get the last two columns of the Old Town mystery quilt closer to final assembly. It's looking a little chunkier, right? Now for a whole lot of pressing before I put sew all of these columns and chunks together. I'm looking forward to the central part of this quilt being done. The end is coming into view! 

I'm even starting to consider what the backing should be. I think I might go with a wide-back fabric instead of doing a pieced one as the quilt top has So Many Seams. And then the binding fabric? Should I do all one fabric, all one colors, or piece together a bunch of the fabrics used in the top. I think a blue color might work out pretty well.

 

Three Columns

My attention turns back to Old Town and getting it all into one piece. It turned out that I hadn't sewn the blocks and sashing together in such a way as to make it easy to do the chunking, so it was time for some column making instead. 

The blocks with sashing went together very easily. Mostly worked out well for all the attention I paid to pressing seams in the correct directions.

Three columns out of five are now sewn together. (But not yet to each other)

Ten Towards Chunks

 

Another ten Old Town blocks have the sashing and cornerstones attached, after I iron them, then it will time for some "Chunking." It's getting easier to sew these together as I go. We learn by doing and all that.

All The Borders

 

Well I took my own advice from yesterday and just tried out the sewing of the pieced sashings and cornerstones to the finished blocks. And they went together quite easily. Before I knew it I got one whole column (that's five blocks) done. They're still individuals, not sewn together in a column. I'm going to use the "chunking" technique that friend Jaye uses to put together her quilt tops

But the work on the blocks was not pressed, as it was too hot by then to turn on the iron. That's for this nice cool morning before it starts warming up. The three borders are also hanging up on the right ready to go as well, after some ironing.

Second Border

 

Instead of working on actually assembling the quilt center of the Old Town Mystery (hey, I need a title for my version), I worked on the second of three borders. That would be the checkerboard one, which I was looking forward to. I think I'm hesitating on assembling the quilt center because I'm just a little intimidated by the thought of sewing all those blocks and sashing pieces together. It's silly because I'm the one that has already sewn all those small parts together to make the blocks and sashing.

Maybe I'll just add on the pieced sashing to just one block and see how it goes.

Also to note, I randomly ended up following the checkerboard directions entirely by mistake. Or maybe my subconscious made note of the point that two of the four sides of the quilt sew the red and white four squares together in one of two orientations. Phew I guess? That would have been a whole lot of un-sewing

Twenty Five Old Town

After a little more work of pressing open seams, I was up to 20 blocks up on the design wall. That means five more to go!

Oh my goodness, here's the final block, ready to be assembled, feels like a finish line being crossed.

I was really really excited to sew that last seam.

And tah-dah! All twenty-five blocks are up on the wall with the pieced sashing. I'm so excited to play around with arranging them until they're looking just right.

And after all the block finishing excitement, there's a little more...I worked on another part of the Old Town quilt at Sew Day. These red and white four patches are on their way to becoming a checkerboard border. 

I was super excited when I saw this was one of the features of the mystery quilt design. I am a total sucker for a checkerboard of just about any kind. I had piles and piles of four patches left over after assembling all the blocks and so I paired up a bunch and sewed them together. At home I sewed a bunch of the now 8 patches together. So I'm on my way to getting one of the borders done for this quilt. Now to press those seams so I can use them once the quilt center gets assembled.




 

Old Town Sew Day

 

This month's Sew Day for Bay Area Modern Quilting (known on this blog as BAMQ) was as usual super fun, and this time, quite productive for me personally and all of us as a group. Before we got started on the group project, I worked on pressing all of these previously sewn together partially assembled blocks for the Old Town mystery quilt.

Two more blocks were finally assembled and pressed making a total of fifteen blocks done

As a group we worked together to make an entire quilt top. It was a quite a good turnout of members and we had a lot of participation in the project so it went together in just one day's effort. There was a main block, two types of side blocks and corner pieces to make. Our Community Giving organizer was Peggy and she had it so well set-up with demonstration blocks like the one above, the background pieces were all using and the instructions for each type of block. It made it so much easier for all of us to dive and get going.

Another one of our members, Carrie took this picture of Peggy getting down to business on designing the quilt with all of our blocks. The leftovers from sewing the block were also assembled into another quilt top. I was too busy sewing them to take pictures of that unfortunately, but they ended up as

Diamond in a Four Patch blocks in two different sizes.

A great day of sewing and socializing!

Up to Thirteen

 

After a whole lot of sewing, I finally arrived at the last to be assembled block for the Old Town mystery quilt.

There was a big pile of sewn-together units all chain-stitched together.

After separating them back into the block groups I kept each group pinned together. They all needed a lot of ironing which I put off to another day.

Part of the reason for the delay in pressing, as per usual is the current favorite resting spot for one of the studio assistants.

Thirteen blocks done and up on the design wall with the pieced sashing. Feeling a whole lot closer to finishing this one.

Six Started

I was happy to get six more Old Town blocks started with the first pass of assembly stitching as I finished up listening to a another spy novel audiobook, Nobody Walks from Mick Herron set in the Slough House series (the great tv show Slow Horses is based on these). I love listening to audiobooks that feature English or other accents, very fun. These go together very well once you get the hang of the layout.

And two more blocks all laid out and ready to stitch.