January Blocks

Wow, January 9th already, Happy New Year Bees Knees!  Oh how I ummed and aaaarrrr'd over what block to use, which fabrics to use, but I did come to a decision in December and was happily cutting and doing trial blocks just to be sure.  So without further ado, I present to you the Hourglass block.  There are great examples of inspiration here (thanks to Red Pepper Quilts) and here (courtesy of Sew Mama Sew).

It all started with these fabrics ...  Then I finally decided on a sort of pink lemonade colour, with a dash of lime!

I've got a package of four white on white squares and four patterned fabric squares heading their way across the sea to you all as of the morning. 

They vary in designer, a little Erin McMorris, Amy Butler and some Kaffe Fassett just for variety!

So here's the request,  I know there is plenty of tutorials out there of how to do Hourglass blocks, I thought I'd show you how I've done mine.  But please feel free to use whatever technique you feel comfortable with.

All of your squares are cut to 7 3/4", and all they need is probably a quick press (no steam, they've not been washed).  I pressed a white and a patterned square right sides together, then drew a line diagonally across on the white square  (just a plain and simple pencil)...

I then sewed 1/4" down each side of the pencil line ...

it should then look like this ...

I then cut right down the middle between the two stitched lines on the pencil line ...

Pressed my seams to the patterned fabric...

to create two half square triangles.

I placed on HST right sides together on top of the other so that each side was a pattern and white triangle touching each other...

Butting up the seams so that they sit snugly together...

I pressed them like this just to hold them together better...

And took my ruler and pencil and drew a line diagonally across the HST like this ...

once again, I sewed 1/4" down each side of the pencil line..

I cut down the middle of the two sewn lines of stitching right on the pencil line..

And pressed the seams to one side.

One pair of square will yield you two Quarter Square Triangle blocks ...

I trimmed each block to 6 1/2", using the ruler to ensure it is squared from the centre...

Rotated the block and trimmed the other side...

I repeated the process for the other 3 pairs of white and patterned fabrics to get 8 QST blocks...

I laid out my blocks so there are four different patterned QST blocks to make an Hourglass block

I joined them into pairs to sew them with 1/4" seam ...

and pressed the seams to the patterned fabrics...

to join the 2 sets of pairs together, I butted up the seams and secured with a pin ...

Sewed them together and pressed the seam to one side....

And now you have one 12 1/2" Hourglass block.  Repeat to make another block, and I'd love you to try to put the colours in a different order so the blocks are different  :)  You all have a different selection of fabrics, so hopefully no two blocks will be exactly the same. 

A long post, I know, thanks for sticking with me! 

Have fun!  Happy Quilting!

Trudi

November in January!

Today I finally set myself to continue to work on Bees Knees Blocks.  And I was amazed at just how quickly Sherri's November block went together.  (Though I confess I had sewn all the HST's together some days ago!)

I love it!  Thanks Sherri, I saved my scraps and have a small plan for them as a reminder of how wonderful these were to work with! 

Winter Migration!

As the Canadian Geese leave for the winter all around me, I am pleased to say my block for Leanne are migrating back to Canada too!

These were such fun fabrics to work with, and I'm thrilled with how the blocks turned out, I hope they have a safe journey home and you love them too Leanne!

Blocks for Lynette

Lynette's October blocks!  For a slightly longer post see my blog. 

I love the way those swimming fish turned out!  When I was working on these blocks I kept asking myself why I didn't buy any of the Lantern Bloom fabric when it came out?  What was I thinking?!

I hope you like these, Lynette.

Jen's stacked blocks

Finally got these ready to post out to you Jen, and before Halloween! 

Hope you like these Heather Bailey fabrics, a little Amy Butler thrown in along with a sprinkling of Wildwood by Eric McMorris.  About the brightest I had!

I'm working on the next batch too!

Cobwebs

This is my block for September. I found it in a book I have and it is similar to the Spider web block.This will be paper pieced. Four 6.5 inch blocks to make one 12.5 inch block. I would like each of you to make two of these so I will be sending 8 already printed. I hope that I can explain all of this so that you can understand it. I have photos too.



After trimming the paper down to within 1/8th of an inch all the way around I folded the paper on the angles so it was easier to tell where the wedge is. You will sew the strips to this part first then put the side pieces on.Because this paper is not easy to see thorough I sewed my strips on the back and pretended that I was not paper piecing. I have drawn a mark on the back so that I would be able to get the strip straight. Then so that I would have that randomness, not sure that is a word, placement of the strips I drew a line under it and varied the measurement of this line on each block so that I could vary the rest of the strips. If that makes sense. In other words, I didn't want to start them all in the same spot. You need to start at that line, marked with an * on the paper and place your fabric below that one then you can start filling in the top and the bottom part of the wedge.

I started to put 7 pieces of fabric for each block in the packets then I did a couple more blocks and thought I should add a few more pieces of fabric. I did most of mine with 8 pieces of fabric. One had 7 and a couple of them had more but the 8 is a good amount to put in there so you can vary the widths of the strips. Please if anyone needs a little more fabric do not hesitate to email me and I will get some right out to you. I know that may be a pain but I just wasn't sure about all of this since this is my first Bee.

After you have the wedge filled with strips, not sure why I didn't take a photo of that. Place the side pieces on one at a time and sew the normal way you would paper piece, flip and sew. You can see that I pinned mine on the back far enough away from the seam line(because it was underneath) so it wouldn't wreck my machine when I stitched it. Please use a small stitch length. I used 1.5 on my machine. If you can't shorten your stitch length then use a bigger needle. The paper should tear off very easily using the smaller stitch length, better than the perforations on some of the bills we get in the mail. You do not need to tear the paper off. I will do that later. If it does tear off as a couple pieces of mine did don't worry about it.

Putting the blocks together after trimming them. I am thinking that seams open would be a good idea but I am not sure as I have not sewn 4 of them together yet. If your corners are a bit bigger like mine here then the seams pressed to one side should be fine. I know I should have but it just didn't happen yet. I was more concerned with getting this all written up and on here.
 Well Blogger  wasn't too helpful today with the placing of the photos  so I hope you can all get the idea anyway.
 If you have any questions please email me. Here is what the block will look like. I will be mailing the packets out on Wednesday. Thanks Ladies! You do not need to follow the lines for the middle section. Those are there just to let you know that the strips go there. That I had done for myself when I made the block up. The packets went out today 9/1/10.

Cobweb Block

August blocks for Leanne

Here are Leanne's blocks for August.  I really enjoyed making these blocks and the fabric is gorgeous!