Rebecca_S

I didn't save any of the progress photos when I made my jack's chain, but is the route I took.

To make blocks, I sewed the individual triangles to squares, then one at a time those pieces to the hex. Each time I started with the square to hex seam, then the connecting tri to square seam. I found triangles to be slightly wonkier to get my seam to stop 1/4" from the end, so if there was a choice I would sew to squares first.

One too few stitches was better than one too many for my starts and stops!

I considered a hex with a border of 6 triangles and 6 squares to be a block, with filler triangles between to make a row. To make the row, I would match the blocks and sew a seam between 2 triangles of the blocks, and then go back and fill in the extra tri above and below.

Putting rows together was not super difficult but was tedious. Each seam should be matched individually with the same starts and stops as for making blocks. I did read that you could sew all along a row continuously but I did not find that to be the case.

I ended up doing some hand sewing for the last rows. I would hand baste some intersections with a few stitches before going back to machine sew the seam.

This was my first piece (only so far!) with lots of Y-seams and by the end I was both sick of them and much better at them! Deliberate practice! I cannot emphasize enough that if I piece isn't laying right, try taking out a stitch or two at your starts and stops before ripping out an entire seam. In the end, I went back and hand-sewed a few intersections to make them fit better.