Selvedge Quilt Continues

I made twenty Brock House units before putting them together. My only requirements for sewing two units together were equal lengths and that they not have the same center solid. Sometimes they matched almost perfectly in length and curvature.

Two selvedge blocks ready to sew together.
Same length and curvature.

Others just needed a trim.

Two selvedge blocks.
On the left: same length, need trimming.
On the right: trimmed.

It got a bit harder after that. The well-behaved pairs matched each other again although the length might be off. In the set below, I added another string to the top right side to get them to match.

Left photo: the top right section bows in.  
Right photo: yellow string added to equalize the lengths.

Other times, they curved away from each other. Fixing that was a choice between adding some strings or trimming the curves. When trimming, I overlaid the two units and cut between them so they would lay flat after sewing. There's a more detailed explanation in this post.

I sewed two sets of four and two sets of six then sewed those together. Again I added a selvedge or trimmed as seemed best.

Things went very well until the last seam. Here's a mistake. I added long selvedge strips to both sides rather than trimming one side.  The selvedges point in opposite directions so even with a variety of selvedge strings this seam is more visible.

On the design wall it was obvious a long selvedge joined every large section together. If I had trimmed both sides, the vertical and horizontal rectangles would have butted against each other in a more natural fashion and better disguised this seam. I may take these out and redo them...

Brock House Selvedge quilt center

Here's a detail of the final seam.

Final seam detail.
All the selvedges point in opposite directions.

Did you notice that the solid selvedges are included in these strings? I was afraid the quilt would be too bland. The solids had really long fringe on the edges, so I sewed them about an eighth-inch inside the woven area. Perhaps you can see it in the photo below. I used white thread for all this sewing since many of the selvedges have a white edge.

As luck would have it, two solids formed a T which you can see in the photo on the left. Like an itch you can't scratch, it bothered me until I inserted a second string to separate them.

Selvedge quilt detail:  before and after
inserting a second string between two solid strings.

One of the best effects of blogging is that it forces me to slow down. Stopping to look at the photos helps me see problems that aren't as apparent while I'm sewing. Perhaps they aren't a mistake to anyone else but it's better to decide now if it will continue to bother me. And what am I going to do when I finish this quilt? Start another. Might as well get this one to my satisfaction.

Previous posts Improvising a Traditional Block and Selvedge Race quilt.

Enjoy the day, Ann