Or ricrac, or rick rack, whatever. I found a lot of spellings when I was trying to decide!
This fun way to piece curves was part of a class I taught this past weekend, and it was so cute in the blocks the students made that I just had to do a tutorial.
We were piecing quarter circles as part of my quilt YOW, which you’ve already seen:
So here is a partially assembled block with one curved seam left to go:
Select rickrack and lay it along the edge of the convex piece. Probably would work with the concave piece, too, but I haven’t tried that:
Sew the rickrack down with the usual 1/4 inch seam
Now turn the raw edge and attached rickrack to the back along the 1/4 inch seam and press. Here’s the front:
And here’s the back:
Lay the convex piece on top of the concave piece and line up the edges.
Flip over and try to line up the raw edges all along the seam on the back.
Applique the convex piece to the concave piece by stitching in the ditch. I used silver metallic thread just for fun, but matching thread works well, of course. And here’s the finished block.
Sort of modern-retro. Go try it!
