How to Sew Curves- The New York Beauty Quilt Tutorial

Making a New York Beauty quilt (and, therefore, a New York Beauty Quilt Tutorial) has long been a dream of mine.  When I started this blog in January 2018, I took it from the dream world and made it a tangible goal.  The year got too busy, and the quilt didn’t get made.

So again, I made the decision to start 2019 with a list of goals, and New York Beauty quilt tutorial was on the list.

This year I was more determined to make it happen.  I fully expect to finish 2019 with one or two goals unmet.  There are only so many minutes in a day and I just cannot get everything done.  However, my Type A personality will not allow me to leave a goal unmet for two years in a row, and so I was more determined to fit this pattern into my schedule.

After leaving my job of nearly 12 years, I knew I was going to have some free time, and I knew I was going to need to decompress.  Quilting is one of the ways I relieve stress, but always having a pattern or tutorial in mind as I cut and sew fabric can add stress.  I knew that in order to really decompress, I needed to quilt for pleasure, not for business and decided it was a good time to follow a pattern, rather than to write a pattern.  It seemed like the perfect time to take on the New York Beauty pattern!

For those of you wanting to make this exact same quilt, I purchased the pattern on Etsy from Tobacco Shed Quilts.  There are dozens of block styles and patterns available. 

As I did some research on the New York Beauty pattern, I found that there is no single pattern this is the definitive New York Beauty.  They come in all sizes, and a lot of shapes, but the defining features boil down to two things-

1. Curves  
2. Spiky Triangles

My guess is that they represent the crown on the Statue of Liberty, although I believe the pattern may be older than the statue.  I guess I have some quilt history research to do!

Quilt pattern history aside, there are lots of block choices within the New York Beauty quilt pattern.  I chose 4 blocks to work with, and for those of you shopping with Tobacco Shed Quilts, I picked Blocks I, K, M and P, for a variety of skinny and fat spikes that are both short and tall.

Now, even though I intended to quilt for fun, rather than for business, it turns out I cannot stop myself from writing a tutorial in my head as I work.  As long as the tutorial exists mentally, I might as well take the time to write it down so you can have the confidence to make a New York Beauty quilt as well.

Now, I am not including a paper piecing tutorial in this post.  I already wrote that tutorial last year, and you can find that tutorial HERE.  This tutorial is about piecing curves.  They look hard, but are really no more complicated that piecing squares and rectangles.  Well, that’s not quite true.  Piecing curves involves way more pins than straight line sewing.  Way more!!!  But other than pinning a ton, curves are really not all that hard. 

Continue reading for a step-by-step piecing curves tutorial.

Sewing with Curves

This is Block M and it has 6 pieces.  There are three rings, the inner and outer rings are paper pieced spiky triangles, and the center ring is a single fabric.  The fourth piece is the inner pie shaped piece, and finally, the outer edge of the block is made up of two mirror-image pieces. Reminder, the inner and outer rings are ALREADY pieced together.

I found it was easiest to remove the paper backing before sewing one ring to the next, but for the sake of this tutorial, I left the paper in place (mostly) to help you to see each step fully.

This isn’t pretty looking at this stage, but this is what the outer and center rings pinned together looks like.

When sewing curves, always sew with the concave side on top, and the convex side on the bottom.

Uh, really Darcy?  Vocabulary lessons?  You know we don’t like those!  We especially don’t like vocabulary lessons when it causes high school math class flashbacks.

Imagine a smile.  Now imagine a frown.  Got those images in mind?

The smile is concave and the frown is convex. 

Find the middle of the rings by folding in half and pin the middles together.  Pin every few centimeters, working from the center out towards the edge, adjusting the fabric as you go so that the edges always match.

Here are the same six pieces that make up this block.  The two outer pieces have been sewn together on the center line.  This could have been just one piece of fabric, but the pattern uses two halves to waste less fabric when cutting.  The outermost ring (blue and yellow spiky triangles) and center ring (tan polka dots) have also been sewn together.  The inmost ring and the center pie wedge have not yet been sewn together.

Sew the center ring to the inner ring, following the same steps as before.  This photo shows a zoomed in view, with just a few pins. 

Here are the same pieces, but not so zoomed in, so you can see the whole thing.  Lots and lots of pins!

And, finally, the same two pieces, but going through the needle, rather than on the cutting mat.  Stitch slowly, and the actual sewing part of sewing curves feels almost like regular piecing of straight lines.

Here are the original six pieces, at the current stage of putting them together.  All three rings are sewn together.

Now, the directions of the pattern say to leave the paper backing in place until the piece is sewn to the next piece.

For Block I, where two paper pieced rings are sewn directly to each other without an inner ring, leaving the paper in place makes sense and works perfectly.

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But I found out (the hard way) that sewing a paper pieced ring to a non-paper pieced ring or center pie wedge, didn’t work so well.  It was hard to get everything to lay flat enough to sew pieces together.

I didn’t remove all of the paper, but left the bulk of it in place to keep the piece sturdy, while removing the paper near the seam I was about to sew, which meant that I avoided wrinkles and folds.

Pinning curved pieces can look a little wonky, especially when sewing a ring to the center pie wedge.  However, using lots and lots of pins, and sewing slowly, allow the pieces to go together without any problems.

All of the rings have now been sewn together, and the rings to the center wedge.  All that is left at this point is to sew the outside piece to the rest of the block.

Now, you’ve got everything you need to sew a quilt with curves!  My next few tips are extras, to make the whole process easier.

If you are struggling to pin an entire curve all at once (especially if the inner piece is bunching up) you can pin and sew just half, then go back and do the other half.

This example shows pinning the right half first.  I don’t know that it makes much difference if you start with left or right.  But look how nice and flat the inner part of the block is laying.

Once it’s pinned, sew the seam, and don’t press yet, but go back and pin the other half, sew and then press.

And now, one whole block is done!  Remember, the paper piecing part of the New York Beauty quilt is not detailed here, but can be found in this tutorial. 

You are ready to take on curved sewing!

Now, my example of sewing just half of the curve at a time was the outermost seam of the block.  I found that to be the easiest of all the seams, and the one least in need of being done in stages.  That’s because I had already sewed all the other seams, and had taken photos as I went, but still wanted to show you that trick. 

This next photo is the reason why.  The seam I struggled the most with was the rings to the center pie wedge.  I found that fabric often folded back on itself and got caught in the seam, which is what this photo shows.  Pinning and sewing just half of this seam at a time solved this problem.

I don’t want you getting the idea that because I take photos and write about what I am doing that I am some sort of quilting expert.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I have struggles and frustrations and make errors too.  I don’t have many paper piecing tips for you in this tutorial, but I do have this to say:

Even though this first ring has twice as many spiky triangles, I found this style to be much easier to make without error.

This ring on the other hand, looks like it should be easier, because it has less pieces, but that one right there, the one circled in yellow, took THREE tries to get right.  I could not get the fabric placement right and it nearly drove me crazy.

But, I kept trying (and cut apart a lot of seams!!!) and eventually the block came together.  All of the blocks came together.  I got to work on a fun project, and decompress like I needed to, and this stunning baby quilt is the result. 

Check back in about two weeks for a full tutorial on how I used a Quilt-As-You-Go quilting technique to quilt lots and lots of detail into these blocks before finishing the quilt.