This week, Chelsi Stratton (from the A Quilting Life podcast) posted her first Blockheads block. She called it "Autumnal" and it's a a leave made with half-square triangles.
While I love leaf blocks, especially in fall fabrics and fall quilts, I'm not really a fan of them in sampler style quilts. When done in the full size, they are (in my opinion), too simple and asymmetrical. But I want to try to do the quilt along... so I'm game to give it a try.
I started with the 4.5" quilt, and mixed it up from my usual reliance on background... and used a pink and green theme. I really loved the way it turned out... but then I saw some blocks posted on the facebook group, where people took four of the small blocks, and sewed them together with the stems touching in the center.
I LOVED the inspiration of these, but didn't relish the number of unnecessary seems and extra bulk that those options created.
So I set out to figure it out myself! Admittedly, it would have been much easier if I had designed it (and tested fabrics) in EQ8 before I cut into the first piece of fabric, but that's not how I rolled today. Plus, with my knee injury, I didn't want to hobble downstairs to grab my laptop!
I'm actually pretty excited, this is the first time I've really tried to take a block and change it up, and recalculate cuts and fabric sizes... and with that center "x" it was a bit more complicated than I thought at first.
Now, my first attempt to create a pattern from what I did!
Step 1: For the outer ring of HSTs:
Two 5" squares of background fabric (A) and Two 5" squares of the print fabric (B).
Lay one fabric A on top of a fabric B, right sides together. Draw two diagonal lines, corner to corner, and draw four dotted lines 1/4" out from each of those lines. Sew on the outer dotted lines (you will sew 4 seams this way). Cut on the 2 solid diagonal lines, and also cut the block in half vertically and horizontally. This should yield 8 half square triangles. Press to the darker fabric and trip to 2" square, being sure to line up a diagonal line. Make 16 of these HSTs in all.
Step 2: The inner ring (yellow roses above). Cut 2 pieces of fabric 2" x 6.5" and 2 at 2" x 3.5".
Step 4: The inside "X". Cut a square about 4", cut it in half diagonally. Sew a 1 x 6" strip to each side of the cut. Press and trip the two corners square. Cut a diagonal seam from corner to corner from the corners without a strip. Add another 1' x 6" strip. Press. Trip to 3.5" square. This is the center. Sew together by rows, with the center row.
Here's my finished block (plus the original 4.5" one):
I love how it's still inspired by Chelsi's autumnal block, but yet I think it fits the other blocks much better!
Thanks for stopping by!
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