Sunday, August 2, 2009

Block 26

We have a few new people who have drunk the koolaid!  Welcome Merumo and Gwendie.  I hope you have a great time on your journey.

There was a question on how to use the line diagrams to figure out what to do.  It's a little daunting, isn't it.  I remember when I finally picked up the book, all excited to start and then found pages and pages of line diagrams and no further directions.

Within the book, the line diagrams are drawn to scale.  It just shows the finished measurement for each block and corresponding element.

As a general rule:
- for Squares and Rectangles - add 1/2" to each of finished height and width measurements.  (1/4" seam allowance for each side)
- for 1/2 square triangles - Cut a square 7/8" (1 inch if you want a little wiggle room and are willing to trim your squares) larger than one of the short triangle sides (not the hypotenuse).  Then cut the square in half diagonally.  You'll end up with two triangles.
 (If this doesn't make sense, please let me know and I'll try to show things with pictures.)

Those two simple rules of thumb were everything required to figure out how to cut everything for this block. 

This block shows the outer small (white & red in the picture below) squares as partially cut off.  I didn't bother trying to figure out that measurement, I just cut the full square.  It'll work itself out when I trim the finished block.

The first thing I did was sew together the centre 4-patch and added all the posts to the borders.

Now I've added the first border to the centre.

Then I added the second border.

And finally the third border.

Finally I added the outer 1/2 square triangles to wind up with the finished block.

3 comments:

merumo said...

Thanks for your warm welcome comment and show us the secret of how to figure the size of the pieces out. Now I know the secret and I guess I can move forward :) I just finished my first block last week and will continue just one block a week. I had to start with block #31 as it is my B-Day number and that was the day I started this project. Now I will try to find the blocks from what you have already shown on this blog to make my journey easier!

My blog: http://pleasentree.blog4.fc2.com/

Yvette said...

It's great to see more people join in on our insanity.

Another great block! I am all caught up! Yippeeeee

Anonymous said...

I never thought I would consider making this top, but I got the bug and I've sent for my book. My biggest problem is trying to figure out what fabrics and/or line I should use. Any suggestions?
Book should be here by the weekend and then I can start, well except for the fabric part.