Friday, October 10, 2025

working with curves


here is that first single gal wheel complete. i unpicked and fixed the section joint on the right side up there. it looks much better now. my second two blocks went together much better than the first two did. i almost seemed to get the hang of this curve thing. curves are still completely mysterious and so not intuitive for me, but somehow i'm making some anyway. i don't have my head wrapped around how/why they work at all, but that hasn't stopped me from producing some! my intuition for how squares, rectangles, and triangles work seems to be off all the time anyway, so maybe i'm better off for not knowing how it works.


i mentioned that i downsized the block a little to fit on my available background fabric. i took a photo to remind myself what i'm doing. 


this is the piece that was giving me the trouble. i started my reductions by taking off the seam allowance on the two tip ends for this piece. then i cut the seam allowance off the end of the pieced arc and (top photo) cut it off the two straight sides of the inner curve. it seems to have worked! my pieces are fitting together and i'm getting wheels, so something went right. lucky guess!


*on my second cutting, i realized if i flipped the templates for the second set cut from the same large strip, it solved my fit issues. oh, well. next time! there's no switching sizes now.


pinning curves together is wild, so upside-down, inside-out, and backwards! 


my tana lawns are playing more slippery than usual. i tend to get slight gathering across a seam no matter what i do. but i'm able to smooth them out before i press the seams open and so seem to have avoided the problems i could have. i should probably be using a small needle or something, but since i don't know what else to try - i'm moving forward. it seems too much work to problem solve when i'm able to fix it well enough with the smoothing.


 by the time i made the first quarter section block, my cutting table was a wreck. it already has stacks of wensleydale fabrics waiting for future blocks. with the three template pieces and various other rulers and cutting tools i need for each stage of construction, it's a regular circus on here! i'll see what i can do to tidy it up a little.


day two, two wheels comlete.

2 comments:

  1. Just lovely Wheels, Hydeeann :))). I think I would make mine by hand..I don't have the templates, but
    I do have the Single Girl booklet--we'll see how it goes...I love trying out new things..even if they don't always work out...hahaha...sometimes I find if I walk away and then come back they work okay..hugs, Julierose

    ReplyDelete
  2. Two wheels - good work. It looks like one of those projects that will get more manageable as you go?

    ReplyDelete

a kind word is always appreciated. thank you for your visit.