I am absolutely addicted to these disappearing style blocks. I’m having so much fun creating
them. I’m on my way to teach in Hawaii pretty soon so I wanted to do one I’m now calling
the Island Sunset. Let’s get started.
Now for today’s project I did purchase two different ten by ten squares. These are the
Wilmington Ten Carat Gems. There’s a pink and purple family I’ve used and a yellow
and orange family that I’ve used. But in all fairness this quilt right here used half
of each stack so I could make two, a beautiful quilt on the back, a bigger quilt than this.
I think you get the picture. So what I really wanted to try to do with this project, not
only design another killer block but try to take colors and push them through each other
was my original intention. And I had a lot of fun designing this. So what I did is I
just took my ten by ten packs, right? And then I went ahead and I just opened them up
and separated them out into my color family. So look at this board that I’ve created
here. If you look carefully I have laid them out from my lightest all the way through back
over here to my darkest of my pinks and purples. And I also did the same with my yellows and
oranges. To get high contrast in this particular project what I really want you to do though
is to take like your darkest of the purple and the lightest of your yellow over here.
And then you’re just going to take those as you’re building your stacks. Just take
a moment and set them up right sides together because we’re going to sew around all four
sides. So I literally just started going all the way through my color piles just like this
until I built up all of my squares that I needed. So that I could just comfortably sit
at my machine and begin sewing. So I think you get the idea. Let’s wander over to that
machine and begin sewing.
I know the quilt looks a bit complicated behind me. That was one of my tricks. But it was
super, super easy. You’re going to use the standard half square triangle trick where
we’re going to take and just sew all four sides of our two squares. So make sure your
squares are right sides together. Some of those lighter fabrics are a little tricky
so look at your print. You’re going to use a quarter inch seam allowance. And I’m going
to go ahead and thread my machine today because I think if I thread the machine it will actually
sew much nicer. And it won’t take me but a second here. Told you. Now we’ve got the
machine threaded. That’s a good starting place for all of us today. And now I’m going
to make my quarter inch seam allowance. And when I’m making these blocks I have found
that it is really easy if I just kind of secure this opposite corner. It keeps things from
rippling and puckering when I’m done later. So I’m going to zip around these edges here
for us. There’s one little trick here. When I come to the corner I just stop, pivot, come
right back in like yay. Lining those up. And I’ll be right back when I’m done with
all four sides. Ok now we’re almost to that last corner and this is why I’ve been holding
that opposite corner so I don’t get much of a pucker as I come in there. It works really
nicely. Thread cut. And then all you’re going to simply do is you’re going to take
that block, lay her on down. And then, and I’ve already got one kind of prepped out.
I have them all over the place. You need a good amount of them, right?
You’re going to take your ruler and you’re going to lay it right where your threads cross.
Not so much worried about the corners but where the threads cross over each other, you’re
going to make one diagonal cut like this. And then without moving the fabric, I kind
of peel the ruler up, drop it back down where those thread cuts are, excuse me, thread crosses
are. For the cut right across the bias again and when that is all done, it is going to
yield us these wonderful half square triangles, right? So this is the magic happening right
here. And that’s all we needed to do for the first step. Now in the description below
we have our free printable today and it shows you how to build our blocks out. We’re technically
building an hourglass block.
So an hourglass block is going to basically going to be opposite colors, opposite colors.
So be careful that you don’t form a pinwheel. The pinwheel is like that. So make sure when
you’re building them you build them all the same. That is your hourglass or broken
dishes depending on which way you turn it. Ok, enough comedy. Now as we get ready for
the seams we are just going to fold these over like this. But because we’re going
to have so many of those blocks what I learned to do was to flip the next set over as well
and build an entire stack right next to my sewing machine where I had my dark triangle
always in the same location and the light triangle always in the same location so that
I could simply nest those seams together there. I could really give it a nice pinch right
here on the edge. And then I could run that through the machine with a quarter inch seam
allowance as well. And when it’s all done it actually looks just like this block here.
Now I want you to be careful, excuse me and this is what I wanted to point out. It looks
just like this block. It is not impossible to build a bunch of blocks and some of them
be facing one direction and some of them be facing the other, which will throw off the
layout when you get this far into the quilt. So just take the time to make sure. Make one
block to this point then make all your blocks so that they all look the same so that you
don’t have any frustrating situations down the road. Don’t mean to make it sound confusing.
It really is not. Ok? So you’re going to build yourself your hourglass that way.
Now the next thing I want you to do because you may not be using pre cuts you may be doing
this your own personal way. Is I want you to measure your square. I come all the way
across here and fortunately I came up with 12 ¾. Now let me take you a second and I’m
going to show you the finished block, a little bit closer. In the finished block I actually
have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine pieces. So I have to divide this
block here technically into thirds. So 12 ¾ in thirds is great because it’s 4 ¼.
However slow down. We’re cutting off of the center seam. So that 4 ¼ has to be divided
by two. So we’re using 2 ⅛ on this block. So what I would end up doing is take my two
and my ⅛ the little black lines in there. And I lay those right on top of that center
block on that center seam there. And I’m going to cut once. Then I’m going to rotate
here, cut with my left hand. Or if you have a lazy susan, wonderful to use your lazy susan.
And I will make four cuts at 2 ⅛ on my size block off of the center. And I’m going to
show you here in just a second what happens.
So as a reminder I made this first cut here, right? And then I made a cut like this and
a cut like that and a cut like that so you get this awesome like nine patch. Now for
our block it’s really simple. I want you to take your center and just rotate it 90
degrees in any direction so you get a checkerboard there. Isn’t that fun? Then we’re just
going to switch out our corners.And I learned this the hard way while doing another fun
disappearing block. When you’re doing your math, don’t cheat. I want you to have perfect
squares. So I want all of them to match as squares so you can make any kind of alteration
or orientation changes. I did it once and this one was a square but everything else
was an odd shape so I didn’t get the opportunity to mix and match. So make sure you’re not
cheating on your ruler when you’re doing your division. And that way you get the perfect
opportunity to do all this. Now it looks really cool here when you look at the raw block these
lines right here look like they’re going to line up. But if you’ll join me at a finished
block, let’s move these out of the way. Look what happens, I just think this is so
cool. On these finished blocks because of the quarter inch seam allowance it actually
creates a gap in the colors. And that I think makes the block look like it is pulsing a
little bit especially if I do this over the top cam for you and it makes your eyes go
like this. So I love the energy that that square creates.
Then once you have several of them made what you can do is you can play. There’s some
new alternative designs. Now I’m going to show you what I did on the quilt behind me
and in a little bit more detail here in just a second. But I was shooting for these opposites.
But the way the block is built you could technically build it and have a new counter block forming
in there as well. Where you’ll have heavy chunks of color, I wanted it to feel equal
in its chunks of color so I made sure I had opposite colors when I was working. So then
another block would fall into here. Not yellows, I would rotate it like that so that I have
lots of different chunks of color working. And in that printable below we’ve got you
the half square triangles becoming the patch, cutting it up. But this is kind of a different
kind of orientation than I normally do. Each letter there on the printable, each letter,
A, B, C, and D represents one of the blocks. Remember each color family is only represented
once in this quilt because you have enough to do two quilts or a really big version.
So here was A, then B, then C and D. But then I come around here to E and I come back. So
a color orientation was the primary block here through the quilt this direction, down
one step, over, down a step, over and all the way through so that the color is shifting.
Because I wanted the quilt to remind you of a sunset over the water in Hawaii wishing
you all paradise be found in all of your quilts until we see you next time right here at Man
Sewing.