Quilt Abecedary: S

Lowercase and Uppercase S/s

I glanced at my letter chart, seeing all the moving parts to an S, and nearly fainted. Just kidding. Because there are a lot of pieces, that means that you can adjust them more if they get out of whack. I decided to start with the capitol S.

I sewed piece #1 to #2, pressed to the dark, then added #3.

Snowball on corner #4. Sew pieces #5 (upper background space) and #6 together. They are shorter than the lower unit. I want the lower background space in this letter (#2 in previous photo) to be a touch wider than the upper background space; the upper one is cut to 1 1/2″ before sewing in.

Sew on the back upper spine of the S, then sort of trim up a bit, getting the lower unit and the upper unit to agree with each other in terms of proportion and width. I didn’t do this, and ended up unpicking that joining seam. I’m also checking to make sure it’s not taller than the rest of my letters (which are averaging about 7 – 7.25.”

When you get it so you like it, sew on the snowball corners everywhere, then stitch the two units together. Trim up. Remember that you’ll lose 1/4″ all the way around when you sew these letters into your words, so don’t trim too much. They should look a little chunky right now.

S is for Super Sewer!

Same construction, only little-er. This is the lower unit, and you can see the measurements of things.

Upper and lower s units.

Yes, I forgot to snowball on that elusive piece (it’s #4 in the big S), so I unpicked that seam a little and sewed it on.

Look at all the snowballed corners–now you can see how freehand I cut my pieces. I’m just trying for some sort of angle across those corners. Of course, you can always leave them off.

Final true-ing up.

Lowercase s is finished.

Here's the whole alphabet to S/s. Almost there!

s is for sampler, sashing, selvage and stash, Snapshot, Silver and Gold, and Sol LeWitt’s Patchwork Primer, and Spectrum

Snapshot, from here (No. 110)

I was one of the three people in America who actually made a quilt from traded Polaroid blocks. I may have guessed on that three part, but I don’t think I’m too far off.