If you are working Splendid Sampler blocks and are about to start block 34, do yourself a favor and get out a disappearing glue stick.  I think you’ll thank me in the end.

Then while you’re at it, if you have a governor on your foot pedal set it to the slowest speed and the stitches will be straight as an arrow.

I finished this block start to finish – printing out the instructions, pulling fabric and ironing them, cutting and sewing 12 half square triangles plus the lemon in the top and ironing in less than an hour.  And I wasn’t really even trying to finish it in a hurry.

There wasn’t much to the half square triangles if you’ve done many of them.  Cut squares into 2.5″ and either draw a line down the middle then sew 1/4″ on each side, or draw the 1/4″ seams and then sew just to the outside – aka a scant seam – for each.  Those were all done in no time at all.

Then came time for the lemon in the middle.  I wanted to stick with the color scheme I had because any true yellow was just not going to look good in terms of fitting in with the rest of the color scheme.  It was one thing to sneak in a different shade of blue but this was too far out of bounds, as least for the yellows I had on hand, which were all bright, bright, bright.

I didn’t bother with freezer paper on this.  I just cut each template out from the printer paper, then lined each piece up in the corner of a 2.5″ square (she suggests a 2″ square but I gave myself some extra room).

Then the big thing I did after I cut them out was to fold each piece in half and press with steam, and then to fold in half again and press with steam so I could really see where they were supposed to line up at a fourth, half, and three-fourths of the way through the ecurve.

Next came the magic of glue basting.  Feel free to disagree with me, but I’m not a fan at all of using pins on these tiny pieces….but they do need to be held together in some fashion.  Pins create a bump, which is just enough to shift when you pull them out.

So I dabbed just a small circle of glue on the lemon fabric in the middle and pressed the light fabric against it and then did the same on the second half of the lemon.  Then I put a small circle at the 1/4 and 3/4 spot on each and pressed again.  And then finally I did the same on the ends of each.  The picture here shows after I glue basted the seams and even with it less than perfect on the ends, They came put fine.  Again, I just made sure to use a scant seam.

Once I was done with that, I patted myself on the back and  then took each piece and very gently pressed them, with the nose of the iron on the lemon and pressed toward the light fabric.

I sewed each of these in one piece and because they were glue basted, I didn’t even have to stop with my needle down to adjust as I sewed through the curve.  It was really easy!

I need to press the block in place; I can see now that it’s not pressed right in the middle which gives the illusion that I didn’t line up the top seam on my lemon.  My photography skills are sadly not improving through this Spendid Sampler – haha!

And with that…I’m finished with block 34!