Friday, August 24, 2018

Christmas All Year - block 8 - Windmill

Welcome to my blog for block 8 - one more to go and we'll be ready to put these blocks together to make a quilt top!  I'm super excited!  Are you ready to work with lots of triangles today?  Don't be stressed, we'll work on it step by step and in the end you'll have an awesome block - this one is called Windmill.

This block uses all the fabrics - and they are all triangles!

Start out with two squares of both your background fabrics, two squares of dark green and four squares of light green.  Cut all of these in half to make half square triangle units.

Sew the background triangles together to make the corner units.  We'll be pressing all of our seams open for this block because of all the bulky corners.
Trim the corners and make sure your units measure 3 1/2 inches square.  Adjust your seam allowance if you find your blocks are too large or small.

Now it's time to cut the quarter square triangle units.

You will need 3 squares of your red and gold fabric for this.  Cut one square of each in half diagonally both directions to make four triangles, and cut the other two squares of each in half diagonally once to make four larger triangles.
Sew the four small triangles in pairs to make four red/gold triangles as seen here.  Press your seams open!
Sew each of these to one of the light green half square triangles you cut in the first step, and press your seams open once more.  Trim corners and measure - these should finish at 3 1/2 inches.  I had to trim a sliver off mine.

Sew these four units together to make a red pinwheel in the center, still pressing seams open.  This is the center of your block and should measure 6 1/2 inches.

Now all you need to do is sew the remaining pieces to make the side units!
Sew the remaining red/gold triangles together into half square triangle units.  Trim corners, then cut in half diagonally to make 8 quarter square triangle sets.  Half will face one way and half the opposite way..

Sew one set to the remaining dark green triangles and the other set to the light green triangles left from step one.

Press seams open, and trim corners.  These units should measure 3 1/2 inches each.

Sew together into pairs, pressing seams open.  Now you are ready to sew the block together!
Pin and do your best to match up all of those triangles!  I find it is a little trickier when the seams are pressed open, but it is a bit easier to sew across them.  I finished up by pressing the rest of the seams open as well and my block is nice and flat.  I don't often press seams open, it takes a little more time, and I do like nesting my seams.  Blocks like this have so much bulk plus it takes a lot of time to figure out which way to press all the seams, so it seems logical to try it with open seams instead.  I am happy with my results!


Thanks for sewing along with me this year.  I can't believe we are so close to the end already!


1 comment:

tac73 said...

I love the colors and textures batiks create in quilts. What an amazing quilt you made! Thank you for sharing it.