Farm Girl Vintage Quilt & Featherweight Sew Along - Block 6 (Canning Season)
August 30, 2018

by April Henry

Lori Holt Farm Girl Vintage Quilt - Sew Along with the Featherweight Shop

Block 6 is here...Canning Season, of the Farm Girl Vintage Quilt Sew Along with the Featherweight Shop! This block features six canning jars -- just in time for late summer canning season. What about you? Are you canning peaches yet?

If you're just now joining us, we are continuing with our Farm Girl Vintage Sew Along at the Featherweight Shop! Grab some fabric, get it prepared and cut and let's enjoy some more Featherweight sewing! This month I am experimenting with a new corner cutting (literally) technique using the "Mini Simple Folded Corners Ruler" and I really, really like it! Follow along with the photos below, making sure to press seams open when you can and being careful to be as exact with your alignments as possible.

BEFORE STITCHING: My teeny tiny white fabric square was so small it didn't fit into the size constraints of the ruler itself, but using the quarter inch seam allowance line I was able to align the line from point to point on my square, trimming off the excess before stitching in place. Yes, that's before sewing! Doing it this way (rather than drawing lines across, from point to point) allows me to keep my Featherweight Accurate Seam Guide in place on the machine for HSTs and my scant seam allowance turned out just perfect!

Lori Holt Farm Girl Vintage Quilt - Sew Along with the Featherweight Shop

Admittedly, I was a bit nervous at first to make that cut prior to sewing, but the results say it all. This block was pretty fiddly, too, with the teeny, tiny pieces, but this was so satisfying!

I pressed my seams open to reduce bulk and as I gained confidence I continued around with the remaining pieces.

Before sewing my lid pieces to the jar pieces, I noticed that my lid pieces were slightly wider than the required 2 1/2 inches. Using my compact sized Featherweight Shop Creative Grids Ruler, which has a handy 2 1/2 inch width, I centered each piece and trimmed away any minute excess so that the jars would come together more accurately.

I trimmed both the left side...

You wouldn't think that trimming this small of an amount would make much of a difference, but in quilting, it most certainly can! I was so glad I took the time to square up these pieces because the jars came together quite nicely as a result.

... and I trimmed the same amount on the right side.

See what a difference that made when I pinned my lid pieces to the jar pieces? The outside edges aligned just right.

The jars on my "Canning Season" block (right) were inspired by the old-fashioned blue canning jars my grandmother and great-grandmother used to use.

**********************

We are on the road this month for our Missouri Star Quilt Company Featherweight Retreat as well as our Minneapolis, Minnesota Maintenance Workshops, but Wendy and the rest of the staff made sure to take photos from the Featherweight Shop Sew Along night so we could share their recap here as well...

The gals decided to try the new ruler as well and they really liked it, too!

Mini Folded Corners Ruler - Farm Girl Vintage (book by Lori Holt) Quilt Sew Along with the Featherweight Shop

Look at all we canned! The colors make it fun to imagine what jam, preserve, fruit, vegetable or sauce are contained in each one.

Lori Holt Farm Girl Vintage Quilt - Sew Along with the Featherweight Shop

What about you? What fabrics and color combinations did you come up with for your canning jars? Be sure to upload your photos in the comments below for others to gain inspiration; we all truly enjoy seeing what you make, too!