Got another row of circles done and faced the daunting task of lining them up and sewing them together. This part is always slow going and tricky but is usually made a bit easier by the fact that I can mix and match the squares till I find one that fits. I can’t do that with this quilt. They fit together in one and only one order and have to line up precisely. Tell me again why I picked this pattern?

The way I go about this is I sew the squares together (square 1 to square 2 and square 2 to square 3) to get a strip of 3 across, then sew the next strip together (square 4 to square 5 then square 5 to square 6) to get another strip of 3. Then I sew the 2 strips together (sewing 1 to 4, 2 to 5 and 3 to 6). The problems always come with sewing the two strips together. If you sew 3 squares that are 8 inches long together you should end up with a strip that is 24 inches long, right? But it never works out that way. No two are ever the same and getting them to line up is a nightmare.

Since this one was trickier than most I wanted to find a way to better hold the strips in place while I sewing them together. If I were dealing with fabric I would tack or baste a few stitches in place to lightly hold it together while I was sewing it. I didn’t want to pierce the paper so instead I decided to line everything up and tape it together with painters tape on the back:

It worked pretty well and still had enough give that I was able to “mush” (technical term for adjusting on the go) as needed while I was sewing to keep things lined up. Again the key to this is to go REAL slow. Here’s how it ended up from the front: