Covid-19 Sewing (3)

I've received a couple of process questions, so I thought I'd do a post about how I make my Steam Punk blocks. My method may or may not be what the pattern instructs! (I haven't read it in detail, she confessed.)

Here's a block that is nearly finished. All that remains is to appliqué the center and then up on the wall it will go.

I'm assuming the reader knows how to stitch the green wedge to the purple arc to the white arc to make the three-part colorful wedges. I do this all by hand. 

The next photos will explain what I do next. Again, this may or may not be what Ms. Kingwell suggests! But it has worked for me.

Using a lot of pins (no photo here), I hand-piece the pieced wedges to the solid wedges. I make two halves of a block, four wedges each. After I piece the first half, I lay it out before piecing the second half to make sure I have the pieces in the second half in the correct order. Once I had to remove a piece and resew it to the other side!

Then I carefully pin the two halves together and machine stitch this one long seam. You can see that I am a heavy pinner.

I give the block a good pressing. 

The center circle piece, unfinished, is 2-3/4 inches in diameter. I make a circle on a piece of freezer paper that is 2-1/4 inches in diameter. I center the freezer paper circle on the fabric circle and press it in place.

I take my can of spray starch and spray just a wee bit into the cap. It is liquid at this point.

Using a little tbrush, I "paint" the quarter-inch rim of the circle with liquid starch. I try not to get any starch on the paper. Sometimes I do, though.

Now, this is the fiddly part. Trying not to burn a finger or two (and being moderately successful at this), I carefully press that damp rim up onto the paper, making irregular tucks/pleats as I go.

Then it looks like this!

And finally it gets pinned into the center of the block for the next bout of hand stitching!