Zephyr QAL Week 8: Sew Rail Pairs
It's time to start assembling your Zephyr quilt! Gather up all those rails you've made and start laying them out. The pattern has several pages that explain how to put the rails together, but I find it easier to look at my coloring sheet (or the cover quilt if you are doing the rainbow throw) and go from there.
Start with the first full pinwheel in the upper left corner and arrange the rails so that the triangles are on the outside and the rectangles are on the inside - be careful that your directional prints are all pointing in the same direction! This pinwheel looked correct when I first laid it out, but after I started sewing my rail pairs together I noticed the rails weren't all oriented the same way. I'm probably the only person who would notice this in the finished quilt, but since I had gone through the effort of making one rail in each direction I did get out the seam ripper and fix it.
I had a few rail sets that I didn't want next to each other (for example, ones with large amounts of white and ones with text prints), but for the most part I just grabbed them in the order I had made them and laid them out following the coloring sheet. At the very end, I did have to flip a few around to balance the bottom rows. I also had to make an emergency bonus half scrap set - couldn't have just one repeating fabric.
Once you are happy with your layout, snap a quick reference photo. That way if you lose track of where something belongs when you start sewing, you can easily see where it's supposed to go. Finally, start sewing your rails together into blocks! Two rails make up one block. As a general rule, each block will contain two different scrap fabrics. The joining seam doesn't nest anywhere, so press as you please.
And that's it! Next week is the easiest week of the whole quilt-along: sewing the square blocks into a quilt top. There's no sashing or borders; just sew the blocks together and you're done!
Still need the pattern? The Zephyr pattern is available in my pattern shop! Join my mailing list to get a coupon code for a discount off your first purchase there. You'll also be the first to know about new patterns and quilt-alongs!
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