Curved piecing made easy with the Dreamweaver XE

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I used the Dreamweaver XE from Brother to start sewing together some of the pieces of our Double Wedding Ring quilt blocks.

So far all of the piecing has been straight seams, just like you would do with most quilt blocks. Today, however, I’ll start sewing some of the curved seams and you’ll see how easy it really can be! Ready?

Start by selecting one inside arc and one of the pieced arcs from the pile that was set aside yesterday – it doesn’t have any squares sewn onto the ends.

Fold the inside arc in half lengthwise and put in a pin to mark the center of one curved edge.

Pin the center of the inside arc section to the center of the pieced arc (the seam between the 3rd and 4th sections).

Pin the ends of the inside arc to the ends of the pieced arc, aligning the straight ends of the inside arc with the straight edges of the ends of the pieced arc.

Drop the presser foot and then use the “needle position” button on the Dreamweaver XE to drop the needle at the point of the first stitch. This will help to hold the two pieces of fabric together while you gently pull at the spot with the center pin. This will straighten out the curve so that you can easily sew the two pieces together with a ¼” seam. Go slow and make sure that the raw edges of both sections are even as you sew.

Once you get almost to the center pin, stop the machine so that the needle drops, remove the pin and then pull on the other end of the pieced arc to straighten out the rest of the curve for easy sewing with the Dreamweaver XE.

Here’s the curved seam between the pieced arc section and the inside arc. Don’t worry, it’ll look so much better once it’s pressed!

The seam is pressed in the direction of the inside arc.

Here’s the first curved seam of the Double Wedding Ring quilt sewn with the Dreamweaver XE.

One down…126 more to go (if you’re making a queen size quilt)!

I’m making a bed runner that will be 2 blocks wide by 6 blocks long, so I need to make 32 arc sections – I’ve got 31 more of these to sew. I’ll keep working on that and tomorrow I’ll use the Dreamweaver XE to attach the pieced arc sections that have the squares on each end.