Skip to main content

Blocks 2 and 3 - Hourglass and Square in a Square





The next two easy blocks in my quilt are Hourglass and Square in a Square.  Both finish out to be 9 inches.  They are good starter blocks for working with triangles.  As the quilt progresses and the blocks get more complicated there will be many more triangles.

The Hourglass is also known as a Quarter Square Triangle Block or QST.  It is easier to make 2 blocks than it is to make 1 so that's what I did.  The picture is of 4 blocks, not one block made up of 4 units but it is fun to combine multiple hourglasses in one block.

For both colorways I used a directional print and it's easy to see where the quarter squares are in the block.  Since you want the edges on the straight of grain making one would waste fabric and by making 2 blocks at once, you can deal with piecing squares together instead of triangles.

There are plenty of QST tutorials to be found.  I started with 10 1/2 inch squares to yield the 9 inch blocks.




The square in a square can also be pieced using squares but I actually cut triangles for the corners in this block,  Each corner is half a square and I had to be careful to get the stripes all going the same way (and with the hourglasses above).  Again, there are many tutorials to be found for making this block.

The center square is 6 7/8 and the corner squares are made from are 5 3/8 squares cut diagonally.


Here's my modern version.  I love the colors and circles.


Labels:

Comments

  1. Denise :)April 2, 2017 at 6:34 PM

    I love the hourglass blocks, in particular -- your piecing is beautifully precise!! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. EricaApril 8, 2017 at 11:33 AM

      Thanks! I've been working hard to improve my piecing.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More Wildflowers of America

Since I have framed the stitched Bleeding Heart from Curtis Boehringer's Wildflowers of America I decided to track down the other 3 wildflowers that had I stiched earlier.  I chose these flowers because they reminded me of the forests of Ohio where I grew up - Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Wake Robin and Bloodroot. The Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Wake Robin where both finished with fabric frames.  This was a favorite finishing technique of mine for a long time.  On the back they are dated 1999 - that was a while ago.  I remember the quilt store where I purchased the fabric, but not its name.  It's gone now but it was in an old Victorian house in Old Colorado City.  The turrets where lined with bolts of fabric and hey had a great selection of plaids. I had never heard name Wake Robin before and it means nothing to me, but the flower is definitely a Trillium.  Back then, I dutifully followed the pattern.  Now I would have used the name Trillium ...
2 comments
Read more

Diverted by Dorset Buttons

I learned how to make Dorset Buttons yesterday at our monthly EGA meeting . These little buttons are so much fun to make!  We only got three rings so that's how many I made.  If I would have gotten more I'd probably be still making them.  One nice thing is that they are very forgiving.  I made countless mistakes on my first one and you can't tell. A quick google revealed lots of websites with historical information and tutorials on how to make them so I'm not even going to try to describe the process. Some people made their buttons with yarn, others used perle cotton.  One of the examples had beads on it, so once I got home I had to find some beads to sew on. That's it for now.  I'm going to be keeping my eye's open rings to use.  I'm also going to have to go through my yarn stash.  Using yarn gives a totally different result and I want to try some yarn ones too.
4 comments
Read more

It's about time - the big reveal

My bright quilt was finished in June but I wanted to wait until both were done before sharing the pictures.  Quilting the blue quilt didn't take long but finishing the binding sure did.  I did procrastinate a bit as it was too warm to have a huge quilt on my lap for most of the summer.  After this, I'll probably do all the binding on my sewing machine (and stick to smaller quilts). Notice the cut-out corners?  That was a challenge.  I found instructions here and it looked easy enough but I wished I had practiced some.  After a lot of finessing I finally got good miters but I could have done much better. The cut-out corners allow the quilt to hang nicely over the edges of the mattress and it's a perfect match for a full sized mattress.  But, the top edge isn't even close to the pillows.  I wonder how the quilt fit on the bed it was made for. Here, at last, is the original quilt that I was copying.   I just...
Post a Comment
Read more