Saturday 29 January 2011

Quilt-a-long: Making the corner blocks

Today we will make 2 corner blocks for your circle of wonky stars baby quilt, but first a quick note on materials.  I originally said that you will need to prepare at least 36 triangles for your star points, well yes 36 to start and then 36 more.  You are going to need 72 in total- 9 stars, 8 points per star.  I had to cut a whole load of extras! I had a question from Amy, would charm squares work for the points and centres?  Good question- yes providing they are 5 inch square charms, nice idea Amy!  Cutting your triangles from  bigger squares just gives you a bit of extra wiggle room but not essential.   Some of the triangle points will be quite small and I have used all sizes of scraps for the triangles.  Before we start, how about some handy labels to pin on your blocks? 
Prefer them as a PDF?  Click here!
Now, cutting your solid background for the top 2 corner blocks.  This is where it helps to have a solid back ground as we are going to save a bit of time.  Place your 2 solid squares exactly on top of each other, you can see my pins which tell me which is the top of each square.  If your fabric is not a solid and therefore not the same on both sides you will need to put the right sides together, as you cut it you will be looking at the wrong side of the fabric on the top square.
The first cut will be horizontal and 3.5 inches up from the bottom of the square (see pic)
Cutting lines Corner blocks
The second cut is also horizontal, this time 3.5 inches up from the last cut- or if you prefer 5.5 inches from the top of the square.  The 3rd cut is vertical, 3.5 inches from the right edge and the 4th cut, vertical again and 5.5 inches from the left edge.  The square in the centre should measure 3.5 inches on each side-have a check! 
You should now be able to peel off the top layer of each piece and lay it out in a mirror image so you have 2 blocks cut, one for each of the top corners.   Fix your fancy new block labels on with a pin.
Take the centre square of the left block and use it as the template to fussy cut the centre triangle fabric.  Repeat for the right block.  Assemble your blocks using the same tutorial as before, courtesy of Victoria. Your end quilt will look better and wonky stars more like a circle if you keep the triangle points of the stars on the small side.  Here are my 2 blocks to give you an idea of the sizes. 

And I think it helps to see what the back looks like too. 
 Back soon with the next tutorial for the bottom corner blocks,  it is awfully similar to what we've just done! And maybe I'll organise a Flickr group so we share our efforts?  If you are quilting-a-long and I haven't got you in my blog roll at the side, let me know and I'll update it.
sib blog

2 comments:

  1. Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave today [30 Jan 12:00am GMT]. Thanks, Maria

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am truly enjoying reading what's going on in verykerryberry blog while I had been gone from blog land! This is such a great quilt-a-long, Kerry! I'd love to make this quilt for my friend's baby!!
    Oh and I am really loving to see you found such a great use for the fabric i shared with you too :)

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time out to leave your thoughts, I do very much appreciate you stopping by! Blogger is not sending comments through by email at the moment so I'll reply in the comments.