Fannying About

Well I hope my title for this post doesn't get me banished from Blogger but basically making the Quilter's Fan block is a tad fiddly. I am using this block design to illustrate the swirling river. 

As already mentioned my assessment piece for this module is to make a table runner and I chose Inland Waterways as my design theme.  So the Rail Fence blocks were illustrative of long boats or locks or buildings along the riverside.  The Drunkard's path to represent arched bridges and the Quilters Fan to represent the river itself.

I took the template from one of my books and although searching the internet and my other extensive supply of books I could not find another one the same.  Lots of fan shapes and other types of blocks with fan in the title but not this particular one, apart from finding an image of a quilt done in the 1930s with Quilter's Fan blocks, and maybe that was the original.

However for anyone who is interested the book I used is called 'The Quilt Block Book' by Nancy Wick and it is full of templates for you to use.

First I copied the template on to plastic and then transferred  the shape to freezer paper.  Each block takes four fan shapes (and I needed three blocks for my runner so that was twelve). You can use freezer paper several times before it won't stick anymore.

Using a plastic template make things easier when you have multiple shapes to cut out.

As the shape is curved I chose to use scissors, cutting carefully around the freezer paper each time.  Wax side goes on to the wrong side, pressed with a dry iron and is carefully peeled off so as to avoid fraying of the material.

Two pieces are joined together first.  Fold the curved edge in half and put a very small nick in the seam allowance to help match the two curved edges together.
















Use lots of pins around the curves, perpendicular to the edge. 

When sewing on the machine keep the concave curve underneath because the feed dogs on the machine help to push it through and avoid creases and pleats.  However you do need to keep checking the piece underneath and lining it up and level so that creases and pleats are not created on the concave edge.  Hand sewing may be the easier option for some people.

Press the seam towards the concave side.

When you have two sets of joined pieces they need to be sewn together and matching the centre point is very important.  Not sure if you can see it in this photo but I pinned them together and then inserted a pin at the centre join to check everything was in the right place.

Using the same tactics as before sew this seam and then press the seams open.

The finished block below, ready to join to the others in a long strip for my runner.

Photos of that to follow.