Catching Up on the Sow Along

Finally I got situated to sew some more Phone Guy's Wife blocks!  Three hours in the sewing studio yielded a number of new blocks.

I think I'll take the corners off the block on the left and
replace the outer triangle with white.

 This is a new attempt at Churn Dash, along with the one I sewed in February (?)... neither makes me particularly pleased.  It's amazing how different they look in the photos.

 This block is called Calico Puzzle.  I should have made more contrast between the two darks. Honestly, the leaf pattern looked more medium in person. 

Maybe it will grow on me...  I love all three fabrics.

 The block - Butterflies at the Crossroads -- caused me untold stress.  The book we're not talking about doesn't give measurements.  I did the math -- a 6 inch finished block divided by five elements equals 1.2 inches per element.  Add .5 for seam allowance and you get slightly less than an inch and 3/4 cut.  Allows for inexact seam allowances, right?  Except for some reason I could not get the size right!! 

I finally resorted to half square triangle paper and threw away all of my unsuccessful pieces.

I'll tell you about the triangle paper later in this post.


Four Winds.  56 HST and 8 1-inch finished squares!!  Oh yeah!

This Four Winds block was actually pretty much fun to sew, believe it or not!  It has a crazy number of pieces altogether -- 64 total.  The HSTs finish at one inch.  I cut out all of the pieces so carefully, counting the number I needed of each and checking them off.  Then when I was sewing them together, I discovered that I had miscounted the green/light green HSTs and I had to make two more.  Plus I sewed one quadrant together with one square upside down.  Twice!



Friendship Star.  A sewist-friendly block if there ever was one!   Except that I ran out of the light green background so the corner squares are a slightly different fabric.  Hardly noticeable in real life but it shows up pretty well in the photo.

There are lots of ways to make a HST, but my favorite has become using triangle paper.  You can use Thangles or Triangle Paper or you can find various directions for doing them without paper.  I just bought software that makes about three dozen sizes and prints on whatever kind of paper you can put into your printer.  It's called Print and Sew from 1-2-3 Quilt at  http://www.quiltpro.com/.  I'm not endorsing it and I haven't been paid any money to say this so take it with a grain of salt.  But I like it.

I get nice crisp squares with hst paper... and once I cut off the dog ears my pieces fit together well!

These are some of the 64 pieces of the Four Winds block.



Next I hope to be finishing up the raffle quilt for the preschool class.  I also have to get back to my DD's blue and brown quilt one of these days.

Happy sewing!