is now

This is a legacy post from prettypiney.com. Not all links work…yet.

Destination: Quilt Along with Partners in Design has been one heck of a journey so far! We’ve traveled to cities and fairs, canyons and lakes…but now is your chance to follow your arrow to the destination of your choice.

Easy piecing and some raw-edge appliqué will get you pointed in the right direction to either highlight your favorite places or to use this block as a unique label for the quilt-along.

Yes, some of the appliqué pieces are quite small. But there’s no need for “perfect” here. I intentionally designed the lettering to look hand-painted so that mistakes wouldn’t stand out. At any rate, it’s just fabric. You have plenty. (If you don’t, your friends do. Trust me.)

Follow Your Arrow Flying Geese Tip

• I like to make flying geese a little oversized, then trim them down. I’m not the most accurate quilter out there, so it’s a pretty helpful trick. You can use a special ruler, like the Wing Clipper or Bloc-Loc, but if you don’t have one available, you can use your regular quilting rulers with just a little extra thought. Check out my tutorial here.

Follow Your Arrow Raw-Edge Appliqué Tips

• You should be able to fit up to 10 characters in an arrow, but if you have a particularly long word or phrase, you can shrink the lettering on your printer; however, cutting out some of the details are already challenging at the full size and making them smaller may require some very precise cutting. The smallest of Karen Kay Buckley’s Perfect Scissors are my tool of choice for these tiny cuts.
• Sharp, angled tweezers are helpful for fine-tuning appliqué placement.
• Any stitch will work to hold down your appliqués, but for this block I recommend a thread that matches the appliqué fabric or a monofilament to maintain the illusion of a painted sign.
• Use a short stitch length for straight or blanket stitches. My Bernina was set to 2.0 (about 13 stitches/inch). Go shorter if you want.
• SLOW. DOWN.
• For the straight stitch, keep the needle no more than 1/8 inch from the edge. Eyeball it, or align the edge of the appliqué with the center of the foot and move the needle over a notch or two (machine settings vary–test first).
• When you need to turn the block, stop sewing and put the needle down first.
• If you choose a blanket or satin stitch finish, you should set your machine to a very narrow stitch due to the small size of some of the appliqué pieces.
• When using the blanket or satin stitch, try to avoid hitting the very edge of the appliqué with the needle. The needle should go down on the background fabric right next to the piece to minimize fraying.

Visit All of the Hosts

Jennifer of The Inquiring Quilter
Karen of Tu-Na Quilts
Kathleen of Kathleen McMusing
Laura of Slice of Pi Quilts
Sherry of Powered by Quilting

The Prize Drawing for Segment Three: October 19, 2021

Segment Three entries open on October 5, 2021 (8:00 am Eastern) and close on October 19, 2021 (7:59 am Eastern). Here’s what you could win if you make all of the Segment Three blocks (#9-#12):

Segment three Prize Bundle

• A 6 month subscription to Make Modern, an online magazine for quilters, by quilters–filled with beautiful patterns and articles to inspire quilters like us to make more modern quilts, and
• a pdf pattern from Becca Fenstermaker of Pretty Piney Quilts (that’s me!), and
• a $10 shop credit toward a purchase from Sherry Shish of Powered by Quilting.

How to Enter the Prize Drawing

Hold your horses! Prize drawings are held after each four-block segment. Here’s how it all works:

We’ve divided the quilt-along into three segments, with prizes at the end of each segment (plus grand prizes at the end of the whole thing). Before the end of each segment, make all of the designers’ blocks in that segment and share either one photo of the blocks together or one photo of each block, but all posted at the same time in one location (all in one Facebook post, or all in one Instagram post, or all in one blog post). Here are the three ways you can enter:

• Join the Partners in Design Facebook group and post your entry there.
• Post your entry on Instagram with the hashtag #DestinationQAL.
• Link up to a linky party that will appear in a wrap-up post at the end of each segment on the segment hosts’ blogs. (It’s the same linky party on every participating blog, so you only need to link up ONCE.)

Please note that while the Partners in Design welcome the customization of blocks by participants, we reserve the right to disqualify entries from the prize drawing if the construction varies significantly from the patterns as written.

Block Eleven’s release is September 28, 2021.