free piecing study - september - churndash

or is that churn dash?

ready for a tute that is full of bad photos and lots of rambling? ok. let's get started.



i started with a 12.5"ish square cut into a wonky grid ala this tute. i pin so i can remember how the blocks go together.




cut some fabric for the churndash part. if i were to do this over, i would cut larger pieces for triangles. cut the bars to fit the middle side pieces.




sew the bars onto the middle background pieces. the top left shows one that has been sewn but not pressed open. the top right shows one pressed open, but oh look, i made a mistake and have to redo that one because i wasn't able to cover the background piece. *speaking of mistakes, i sewed all four of these wrong the first time. nice. then when i had figured out what i was doing (forgive me i had just gotten out of bed) i then sewed two wrong just like the one shown. nice. i spent a few quality minutes with the seam ripper before continuing.* the bottom left shows one pressed open but not trimmed. the bottom right shows the square flipped over and trimmed. use the background fabric as your template to guide you where to trim.




the top left shows one flipped over but not trimmed. the top right shows one flipped and trimmed. the bottom left shows trimmed and opened up. the bottom right shows the excess background trimmed off now we don't need it for a cutting guide.




same process with the corners.




lay everything out in it's proper place and sew together.




and voila! a wonky churndash block that just barely squeeked into a 10.5" square. and i wish i had made the triangles bigger.

did you notice that i made mistakes and had to rip out seams and resew?
did you notice that i wished i had made the triangles bigger?
did you notice that i barely made it to the desired size?

free piecing people!

free piecing is a learning experience.

and while i was sewing (and seam ripping), i realized that this is a pretty fussy method with the wonky background. sewing with squares would be easier. but if you are trying to achieve an extra wonky look, this is a way to do it.