Process Post: All in the Ohana

Since my process for All In the Ohana was pretty detailed, I have split it into two posts. One for those who just want to see the end product and coo over the selected fabrics, and another that documents the process for any non-quilters who are curious about my method for joining scraps to look continuous.

As a quilter, I learned a pretty neat trick for making non-continuous fabric look continuous. If you're curious about my process, here goes:

1) Start with two scraps that capture different areas of repeat of the fabric, but have some overlap. within the overlap, decide on your "Line of Relative Disinterest:" a line across the fabric that doesn't have much going for it (no faces, or designs that you don't want distorted). This is where your seam joining the two pieces will go. In this case, I picked a line across the sand and as much non-foamy water as I could get, so the seam would naturally be less noticeable.

2) Lay what will be your bottom piece out flat, and fold the top piece to the line of relative disinterest identified in (1). Then lay your FOLDED top piece with the fold along the same line on the bottom piece, so that the two look continuous when placed together.

3) Slide a quilting ruler (or some other straight edge) to the bottom of the fold in the top piece. It should line up with your Line of Disinterest. (see above)
4) Then holding both top and bottom piece carefully in place, open the fold and mark the fold line. This lets you put a "seam guide" at the place where the two fabrics match up.

4) Pin! Pin, pin, pin, pin, pin. Pin like it is going out of style! And, pin without moving the two fabrics relative to each other, because this is where you'e ensuring that your top piece is going to fold back out to look continuous with your bottom piece.

5) Sew along your sew guide line, again being careful not to shift your fabric. (I didn't think to take a pic, but if you can sew, you can imagine this)

6) Open the fabric back out, and admire (or critique!) how close you got to matching the repeats perfectly. When convenient, trim the excess on the side you are not using.

Here's my end result, which allowed me to fussycut the way I wanted to AND squeeze a second dress out of a yard of directional fabric with an 11 inch repeat! Not a bad deal, especially considering it was impossible to buy more fabric.