Saturday, January 9, 2010

Josephs Coat Joining - The Needle Turn Saga

Kellie warned me before I started that doing needle-turn was going to be difficult when we started joining the squares together. Subsequently, I've been stressing about this step for months. It actually went well, although fairly slow. Here are some things that I figured out that might be helpful if you are trying this approach. First, I borrowed an idea posted by someone who was using a dark background. I took a blank overhead-projector transparency and copied the pattern with a Sharpie:


I followed Kellie's joining instructions through step 5, but using the clear template on top to make sure that all the finished petals were lined up.


It's a little hard to see, but the pink and blue petals in the center are finished and the 4 raw edges are touching across the horizontal axis. The pink lines from the clear template line up along the finished edges of the blue petal (maybe not quite so well on the black/green petal and pretty well on the finished edge of the purple/pink).

In this picture, I'm holding the raw edges of the green and purple blocks together to snug up the blue finished petals to "kiss".  Pin well.  Then I used standard needle-turn technique to stitch from the center out.

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