The Tessa QAL - Piecing Your Quilt Top

Yay, we get to put our Tessa quilt top together! Feel free to move at your own pace here - we have 2 weeks to piece the quilt top.

 

Video Chat

We will be doing another video chat this week on Thursday at 1pm PST. Bring your questions about the pattern (or about quilting/patterns in general) or just show up to chat. It has been so much fun!

Here is the link to join the chat (remember it won't work until the meeting starts): meet.google.com/uoy-ymbz-hvh

Supplies

You will not need any special supplies for piecing the quilt top, but here are my preferred quilt-top-construction items.

• Patchwork pins - these are thin, slightly flexible pins and work really well for pinning seams. 
• A quarter inch foot - find one that you like and that works well with your machine. Your sewing machine probably came with a 1/4" foot and it may be great, but sometimes it isn't. I use a Janome MC6600P and the 1/4" foot that it came with is not the best. Janome makes a foot called O2 that is fantastic.
• A good iron - having seams that are pressed well can make a big difference

Tips

There are a couple of tips to help you with your piecing. I am going to list them below but then I talk about them a little more in depth with the video.

• Look at the diagram for your quilt and notice that the upper left corner of the quilt top has a piece that needs to be centered over the piece it attaches to (on the baby and twin sizes, there is a piece like this in the lower right corner too). Since there isn't a seam to help you line things up, fold your pieces in half and crease them - then line up the creases and pin. 
• There are going to be pieces along the edge where you are sewing a smaller piece to a wider piece. It's going to feel a little weird. Line up the bottom edges of the pieces and then piece them together - we will be trimming off the extra fabric later.
• Pin at every seam intersection when you are sewing your rows together. There are only a few places where there will be seam intersections - pinning at each one will help keep things lined up.

If you have any questions about the pattern, please ask them here in the comments. We have another week for piecing and it is helpful for me to know what your questions are so that I can answer them for everyone. Additionally, several wonderful long arm quilters are going to be offering discounts to get your Tessa Quilt quilted and I will be sharing all of the details soon.  Make sure to use the #tessaqal hashtag on Instagram, I am loving seeing all of your quilts! You can find all of the Tessa QAL Posts here.