Corn and Beans--Sampler Block

I don't know how far along everyone is on their sampler, but I just finished making the Corn and Beans Block, shown at left. In this blog update, I'm going to demo an easy way to make the large center blocks.

The center blocks look like a big half-square triangle with an inset small half-square triangle. This combination is known as a "Magic Triangle" or "Mary's Triangle" in many quilt patterns. I call it Magic Triangle because it lends itself to many different layouts.

To make the Magic Triangle, start with two half-square triangles that are 2.5" square, and a strip that is 2.5" by 3.5". Sew them in the arrangement shown. Please note that the half square triangle needs to be positioned as shown so that it will be in the right place and orientation in the Magic Triangle.

The pieced block should look like this at this point and should measure 4.5" x 5.5"

Flip the block over and clip the vertical seam about halfway betwen the two half square triangles. The red arrow shows where I clipped it. Press the seams in opposite directions so that the half-square triangles lay flat and the corner intersection of seams is visible on both half-square triangles.

Using the 45 degree mark on your ruler, line up the edge of the ruler so that it intersects the corner of the half-square triangle AND the bottom right hand corner of the block. Red arrows point to where the line should go through. This is your sewing line.

Repeat the marking on the other half square triangle. Place the marked block on top of a solid color piece that is 4.5 x 5.5. Sew on the marked lines, being sure that the seam exactly intersects the corner of the half square triangle and the lower right hand corner of the block.

Cut the block apart between the seams. For illustration only, I made the blue piece of fabric larger so that you could see it beneath the pieced block. In your block, the pieced block and the solid-color fabric should be the same size.

Open up the block and press open. Voila! Magic Triangle. If you look at the pattern, you'll notice that the block requires 4 Magic Triangles, two with a colored (blue) triangle and two with a white triangle. To make the white Magic Triangle, repeat the steps of sewing the strips and marking them, but piece it to a piece of white fabric.

The rest of the Corn and Beans block is made of half square triangles and flying geese. Arrange the block as shown.

June Meeting

The Sassies met on June 9 at Mozelle's house. Everyone was there except for Estela, who was out of town on business (drat that work schedule!).

Looks like the Sassies have been really busy. Debbie made this intricate looking quilt called "Calico Crossing." It looks like the blocks intersect each other, sort of like chain-link fence. Very nice colors!

This is Susan's idea of a "scrappy" quilt. Looks really well coordinated to me, not at all scrappy. But she said that she used up a bunch of her blue, yellow and tan scraps--some of the pieces were just a few inches long! Terrific piecing, and great sense of color placement!

Susan made a red-white-black version of a quilt pattern that's been popular with the Thursday lunch bunch. The original pattern called black, white and brights forming the criss-cross pattern, but Susan used only red for the criss-cross. Look at this same quilt made by Mozelle (below).

This is Mozelle's black-white-bright crisscross quilt. I love the bright lines that go diagonally across this quilt. And notice that she made a piano-key border--you have to do very accurate piecing to get a border like that to lie flat!

Diane Baker made a beautiful baby quilt--lots of bright colors and a playful center panel. I didn't hear, but is this for a grandbaby?

Diane B's grandmother made this quilt and gave it to Diane's mother. Diane's mother has given it to Diane to quilt. It's such a nice feeling to hold something that goes back into family history. I know Diane's quilting will be lovingly done.

I told you the Sassies have been busy! Below Diane B. is pictured with a sampler quilt that she has finished. The blocks were made some time ago and Diane decided it was time to put them together. Samplers are a great way to experiment with a lot of different blocks.

Diane Purcell has finished piecing a scrappy little four-patch! Great way to use scraps, and the colors always seem to work together really well, even when you don't think they will.

Here's Mary Ann with her "north woods wildlife" quilt. That's my name for it; not sure what she calls it. The fantastic thing about this quilt is that there is NO paper piecing here. She's pieced those intricate-looking animals and houses the old-fashioned way--CAREFULLY!!!

The donation quilts are rolling in! The following 7 pictures show these lap-sized quilts in various patterns. Some are in the "framed 4-patch" pattern, but others used different patterns that could be made from the 2.5 inch strips that we cut up earlier this year.

May Meeting

Our May meeting took place on a stormy night (nothing new there!). Just as we were pondering the severity of the storm, the lights flicked on and off several times. A loud clap of thunder and flash of lightning made up our minds--we decided to do show and tell, eat our snacks, and go home!

Here's Mozelle showing off all the sampler blocks she's made so far. She has picked a gorgeous fall pallette for her quilt--lots of browns, golds, some greens, and a dash of russet.


Eva has moved onto the second row of the sampler quilt, and this block is from that row. The rest of us will have to speed up to catch up with her! She made lots of flying geese for this block.

Susan showed us the next block in the sampler. This block can be made a number of different ways, depending on whether you want to work with triangles, flying geese, or paper piecing. Susan used the flying geese method for this one. By making it with flying geese, she avoided having to make mitered seams at the corners of the block--smart choice!

Susan is shown here with her Peace and Plenty Block. Susan has also picked a fall pallette for her sampler quilt, but her colors are totally different from Mozelle's.

Meg's Peace and Plenty block. The central pinwheel is so full of motion because of her fabric choice.

Our guest this evening was Eva's sister Jimmy. She's been one busy lady, and had lots to show. Here she's holding up some tissue boxes made using plastic canvas and yarn.

Jimmy holding up one of a set of 4 place mats. Love that hot pink binding!

Here's another one of her set of place mats. Very cheery color scheme.

I told you she'd been busy! Here's a beautiful set of placemats using a floral print.

After all that, we packed up our stuff and went home! Here's hoping our June meeting has better weather. Looking forward to next meeting!

Block 3--Peace and Plenty

This is block 3 of the sampler quilt. In the pattern, it is called Peace and Plenty. The pattern shows one way to cut the pieces; in this tutorial I have chosen a different method to make the same block using "flying geese" (shown in yellow and white below) and half square triangles (shown in 2 shades of blue). Fying Geese are easy to make, and the rest of this tutorial is dedicated to how to make them for any given size.

For ease of reference, I will refer to the parts of the flying geese as the goose body (the triangle piece in the center) and the triangles on the sides are called the sky. Some people call the side pieces the wings, but I will call them sky pieces in this discussion.

You can make flying geese in any given size without the need for any special rulers. Look at the pattern that you are trying to make, and determine what size FINISHED geese you need. Remember that "finished" refers to a piece AFTER it is sewn into your quilt. For example, a piece that is 3-1/2 x 6-1/2 when you make it, will have a finished size of 3 x 6. The Peace and Plenty block is 12-1/2 inches when you make it, and to get that size, you will need to make 4 flying geese, each 3-1/2 by 6-1/x. That means that the geese will be a FINISHED size of 3 x 6 inches once the block is sewn into the quilt.

Choose the fabric for the goose body and the fabric for the sky. I chose yellow for the body and white for the sky. To make 4 flying geese, you will need to cut 1 square of the goose body color that is the WIDTH of the FINISHED goose plus 1-1/4 inches. Since the FINISHED geese in this pattern is 6 inches in width, that means you will need a square that is 6 + 1-1/4 = 7-1/4 inches square. For the sky, you will need 4 squares that are the HEIGHT of the FINISHED piece + 7/8" Since the HEIGHT of the FINISHED geese in this pattern is 3 inches, that means you will need to cut 4 squares that are 3 + 7/8 =3-7/8 inches.

Now, take 2 of the sky squares and draw a diagonal line through them. Line up one square on one corner of the goose square, and line up a second square on the opposite corner. See the picture below. You should have the sky squares lined up exactly on the diagonal, so that the line you've drawn on one square will line up exactly with the line you've drawn on the other square.

Sew a seam 1/4 inch on one side of the line that you've drawn. Go all the way from one corner of the big square to the other corner, sewing through body of the sky squares. Now sew a seam 1/4 inch on the other side of the diagonal line. It's a lot like making half square triangles. Cut this piece in two along the drawn line. See the picture below.

Separate these pieces and press out the sky pieces so that it looks like the picture below. Place a 3rd square on the corner of the goose body fabric, and draw a diagonal line through it, just like you did before. You will be sewing a seam 1/4 inch on either sie of the drawn line.

Cut on the drawn line, and repeat with the other units. You will have 4 flying geese units that look loke this:

Trim to size to get rid of the "ears" and you will have 4 flying geese units.

For this block you will need to make 4 half square triangles, using the method of your choice. Now you can arrange your block as follows:

Once you've sewn the pieces together, you will get a block that looks like this:

Sassy Quilter's April Meeting

The Sassy Quilters met at Meg's house in April. It was a stormy night, but the faithful turned out. Present were Meg, Mozelle, Susan, Eva, Sheila, Diane B., Diane P., Cindy, Dolly, and Estela. The business portion of the meeting was fairly brief in case we lost power or had to leave early because of bad weather.

We worked on different ways of making half-square triangles (there will be a separate blog post on that topic). Although most Sassies had made the first block (Grandmother's Fan) of the sampler quilt, some of the ladies worked on their block during the meeting.

We were treated to a bevy of beautiful quilts during show and tell. It looks like a lot of you, especially Meg, have been very busy quilting. We did show and tell sort of a like "bed turning." The quilts had all been stacked on the bed, and when the top quilt had been admired and "oohed" and "ahhed" over, it was pulled off to reveal the next beauty. These are the quilts we saw.

This was Meg's quilt; she cut long strips of fabric and pieced them randomly. Note that each vertical column has one single four patch randomly placed. Can you find the four patch in each strip?





This is a scrap quilt made solely from half square triangles. Meg quilted this for someone.

Meg made this framed four patch, using the same four patch in the center of each of the brightly covered blocks. It's very colorful!

This was made by one of Meg's "students" in another of her sewing groups. I believe this is a beginning quilter who made this. "Card trick" is not the easiest quilt for a beginner, but she did a beautiful job, especially in selecting her colors.

This quilt and the one below it use the same pattern, but in this quilt, the diagonals are sewn from black and white fabric, and the larger blocks are made using bright colors. At first glance, it's hard to see that it's the same quilt as the one below, which uses the opposite color scheme.

This quilt uses the same pattern as the one above, but in this one, the diagonals are made using bright colors, and the larger blocks use black and white fabrics. They are both stunning!

Another one of Meg's; this is a sort of windmill pattern. It's a four patch, and each piece is identical to the others. The twirling effect comesfrom the way the pieces are rotated.

Another one of Meg's quilts. This pattern is called Square in a Square 2; it looks complicated but is actually easy to piece.

Meg calls this quilt "Monkey Business." Doesn't it remind you of the kid's game that uses plastic monkeys that you try to string together by the hand? Meg says that all the pieces in this quilt are identical (2 different colored strips joined at a 45-degree angle, forming a rectangle). It looks a litle like another pattern called Snail's trail. This one is made in batiks.

Eva designed this block by playing around with 2-1/2 inch strips of coordinating colors. She and Susan are now working on a written description of how to make this block, with an eye toward publishing this in a quilt magazine. Way to go, Eva and Susan!

And this is Mozelle's beautiful cream and navy quilt. She's been making these blocks for the better part of the year, and now it's pieced! It's curved piecing and she did a fantastic job--notice how nice and flat it lies! Meg won't have any trouble quilting this one.

Hope to see you all at next month's meeting! We will be working on the second block if you haven't finished it by then; otherwise we will be starting on the applique motifs. Please bring your fabric to the meeting so that you can work on your block.