Summer Sampler 2018: Water Well block

Is it summer yet? It is in my world, because the first Summer Sampler block was released today! Water Well by Katie Blakesley of Swim Bike Quilt is starting us off on the Summer Sampler 2018 quilt-along.

Summer Sampler 2018: Summer Road Trip is a quilt-along where all the blocks are travel-inspired. We're making one block per week, starting now and going through September. Katie's block was inspired by a well in Jaipur, India. You can read more about her inspiration here.

So we've got the first star on our world-travel map ... India! Time will tell where the rest of the blocks take us. 😀 Want to join us in our quilting world adventure? Click here to subscribe to Summer Sampler 2018.

This block was fun and easy to make—you just need to embrace your old friend, the 1/4" seam. 😂 Each week I'll be blogging a tip or two for making that week's block, so this week I have two suggestions:

1) Press your seams open, as you sew. Don't sew all the horizontal seams and then press. I find it's easier to get a nice 1/4" seam if my fabric is nice and flat.

2) Alternating the side that start sewing from helps alleviate seam curving when sewing narrow strips. So if you sewed your first seam starting from the right side of the block, do the next seam starting from the left side, and so on.

Slow and steady accuracy will win the day with this block!

Until next week and our next destination, I'll leave you with this parting photo of the lovely Indah Batiks by Hoffman's Me + You that I'll be using for the quilt-along. I'm more or less following the Cool color scheme that we showed you here, but with a bit more variation in shades, and of course, the lovely batik designs. Can't wait to see how it turns out! (You can pick up these lovelies at Stash Fabrics.)

If you're quilting along with us, be sure to hashtag #summersampler2018 to show us your progress! Have a great week!