The Snowballs are Flowering

I am still working on the Flowering Snowballs (Cross Blocks). As you can see, I have taken the Child’s advice and added in some visual resting places for the last 10 blocks.

As I have mentioned on numerous occasions, these are hand pieced. I intend to sew them together by machine. However, in the cutting process, they do not all turn out to have uniform edges. I have been wondering if they would come apart if I trimmed them with a square ruler and then sewed them all together?

The knots I have made to hold the pieces securely would be trimmed off. Would it matter how quickly I sewed after trimming? The machine piecing would definitely hold all of the blocks together. More pondering….

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

6 thoughts on “The Snowballs are Flowering”

  1. Having those knots cut off was part of the reason I abandoned hand peicing after trying it for one or two blocks years ago — I’d suggest marking the cutting line with a pigma pen, machine sewing the blocks together and only then trimming the seam allowances if you still wanted to… OR trim one edge and pin those seams really well, and machine sew it together immediately — if you trim all the sides before you re-stabalize the hand sewn seams I expect there might be a fair bit of splitting…

  2. Great ideas and thoughts! I really appreciate your time in commenting. Sometimes it takes someone else to say something common sensical to get my mind out of its rut. I like the idea of drawing a sewing line and stabilizing the blocks before trimming. Thanks!

  3. Jaye – you could also mark (air or water pen)your cutting line.

    Then machine sew a line so that this line stays in the seam allowance.

    Good luck – I think its great that you have all these projects – they seem like they will all come together at one time.

    😀 eirdre

  4. Deirdre: I am behind on responding to comments. A little thing called Christmas got in the way. I think marking somehow could be the way to go. I am reluctant to cut them without some kind of anchoring stitch.

    I like the variety of projects, but I have to admit that I have a few too many hand projects going right now. The Flowering Snowballs will turn into a machine project as soon as all of the blocks are done.

  5. I’m happy to have finally found the name of this block that I saw and fell in love with a couple of months back. I have been trying and testing out to figure out what technique to use and how now finally come to machine piecing (because I would like to be able to finish it!). So far the results haven’t been impressive, so far due to my pinning I think. Did you find the pattern for this somewhere? If you’d like to let me know more about your process I’d love to hear from you! Thanks 🙂 Mille in Norway (an amazing job you have done here, by the way!)

    1. Hi Mille,
      I found the block in EQ. I now have EQ7, but found it in either EQ5 or EQ6. It is from Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Quilt Patterns. It is #3081 (Aunt Kate 7/65) and it is called Flowering Snowball. Hope you stop back.

      I wish I had started my quilt by machine!

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