Originally Posted by
boone926
Has anyone made this quilt. I have had numerous problems with the pattern, it seems to contradict itself in many places. One question it does not address is what you square the block up to. when you put the blocks together they pucker up something awful. Any help would be appreciated.
I am in the process of making the quilt. I am making a 7 x 8 set of arcs. I have made all of 6 x 8 rows and have them sewn together in diagonal rows. I have about 6 main blocks left to do and the bottom scallop arcs. Funny, I say bottom, but it could be top, according to how the top gets turned after I finish it.
This quilt taught me a lot about reading the pattern well and then do what I understood it said. Sometimes I had to go back over the instructions several times to really understand them. I did a lot of unsewing...otherwise known as ripping. It didn't take me long to realize that all my seams had to be consistent and exactly on the lines. Nothing would line up properly if I missed by much. I didn't understand how perfect the floating points had to be until I started putting the diagonal sewn rows of blocks together. Once again, I was ripping and making sure the floating points ended where they should. The pieces the floating points sewed to had to be cut exact or they ended up with excess fabric. After doing all this, I found there was no reason to square up the blocks. They were close enough. Where I found puckering was when I was sewing the 4 sets of arcs together to make the main block. If either fabric slipped a tiny bit, the seam puckered. I did a fair amount of ripping, AGAIN, until I realized that consistency was the key for me.
Did I mention that before this my only adventure in paper piecing was 3 NY Beauty blocks I made for a guild? Boy have I learned a lot and gotten completely hooked. I had only the BWS pattern by Judy Niemeyer when I started this project, now I have almost all her patterns. I started BWS late December 2013.