Garden Path Block

I was not looking forward to making the Garden Path Block for Green Tea and Sweet Beans. It involves those pesky y-seams. However, I sort of made up my own method and it seemed to work for me. 

Here are all my fabric pieces cut out and put in correct order. 

I sewed the large pieces onto the middle octagon piece. So far, I'm following directions!

I sewed the background pieces on the smaller rectangles. Still following directions!

As you can see, that piece I just sewed together is to be sewn between the larger rectangles already sewn onto the center piece. You're supposed to start at one end, sew across the middle and then finish up at the other end.  Not for me!!

I decided to sew the middle seam first.  This way, I would be sure the smaller rectangle was centered correctly onto the octagon.

Then, I sewed from one end towards the middle seam I had just sewn.

 

I repeated it for the other side also.

When the block is complete, it ends up being quite bumpy and not flat at all. All it takes is a little ironing with Best Press. I added the background corners and my blocks were complete! See, y-seams are nothing to be afraid of! (I'll have to keep reminding myself !!) Hope this helps anyone else who tries to keep away from any y-seams.