Sunday, May 31, 2009

Block 47

Another relatively simple block for us.  Warning!!  We're going to have another more complex one coming up soon.  (Don't want to leave them all until the end...)

I ended up paper piecing the triangles on the side.  The measurements were a little off, so paper piecing it is.  Here is everything cut and ready to go.  

The first things I did were make the 1/2 square triangles for the centre pinwheel and attached the posts for the middle border.  (Behind the scenes I did the paper piecing :)

Here things are with the centre pinwheel.

To get the centre of your pinwheel to lie a little more flatly, after you've sewn everything together you can remove the last few stitches of the seam and press you seam so it goes in opposite directions.  You end up with a little baby pinwheel like this:

Here I've attached the middle border and placed out the remaining pieces.  I cut the corner triangles a little larger and trimmed them down after they were attached.  I split the outer border like this to avoid Y-seams. :)

Here it is with the paper pieced triangles attached.

And here is our next block with the corner triangles attached and trimmed!

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Block 20

Here are all the pieces set out and ready to go.  You can see, for the corners, I cut rectangles that fit the longest measurement of the point and then trimmed things up when the corner piece was assembled.

Here is a close up of the corner.  One trimmed the other ready for trimming.

Onto the centre.  First I assembled the 4 patch and the outer posts.

Then the 4 patch becomes the centre of a square-in-a-square block.

Then I added the middle, light border.

Then the outer border.  The centre of the block is ready for its corners.

And here is is with the corners attached.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Block 73

A nice simple block for us to recover from last week's tougher one.  With this block, the block diagram and block picture in the book are different.  The blocks with the three bars (rail fence?) are rotated.  After some playing with things, I decided to go with the block diagram.  I just liked the way it looked better with my fabric choices.

Here is everything laid out and ready to go.  That stack in the middle is the square-in-a-square.

Here things are with the building blocks assembled.  Ready to go together as our old friend the 9-patch.

And here is the final block!  Looking at it, a little more contrast between the two mediums would have been nice, but overall I like it.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Block 37

This block, while not complex does have a lot more pieces than the blocks we've done these past few weeks.

Instead of laying out everything at once and overwhelming everyone with it all, here are the pieces for each of the main elements.  Both the corner and centre blocks start off with square-in-a-square.  While the middle edge blocks are hour-glass blocks.

If you notice the corner blocks, they're not quite a standard square-in-a-square block.  What I did was cut the four white triangles to fit the largest triangle and treated the block exactly like the traditional square-in-a-square.  When you trim the first two triangles, you just end up taking off much larger dog ears and your block looks a little like this:

Here we are with the hour-glass blocks, the first round of square-in-a-square blocks and the red & white 1/2 square triangles for the centre square all ready to go.

For the sides of the hour-glass blocks I cut the strips wider than needed and trimmed after sewing.  This helps make the tiny strips a little more accurate.

Here we have the second round of square-in-a-square blocks and the hour-glass blocks trimmed and ready.  Plus, I've laid out the rest of the pieces so we see everything for the whole block.

Here I've added the white borders to the hour-glass blocks and added the next border to the centre block.

Now I've put the top and bottom rows together and finished off the centre block.

Here we have the middle row sewn together.

And, finally, the finished block!

I think this one turned out pretty interestingly and enjoyed making it more than I thought I would when I first looked at the block diagram.  I hope you enjoy it too.