Friday, June 07, 2019

Seashore Splendor Block 9 - Snail's Trail

Hi - yes, it's time for another installment in the Seashore Splendor saga!  I'll be giving you all a bit of a workout this time around - we will be making three 12 1/2 blocks and four 6 1/2 inch filler units.  You'll see when you do the cutting, that there is a good reason for this as it makes the best use of fabric, plus it's going to add a great motion to our finished quilt!  Actually, this block goes faster than you imagine, and it pushes our progress on this project along nicely.

You need four fabrics for this set of blocks - light, medium and dark sea and sky.  You will need nearly a fat quarter size of each one, I had to go back to my stash and replace my light sea fabric because it wasn't enough to cut all the pieces I needed for the blocks.
The cutting goes quickly, after you get the fabrics all cut to the needed sizes, divide them into four sets of four color.

I recommend making all your blocks at one time, chain piecing as you go.

You start with a four patch - take care to arrange them in the proper order!  Then we start adding triangle units, starting with the smallest.  It doesn't matter what order you sew them in, but make sure you sew them in the right orientation - for me it helps to remember to sew the triangle that matches the color on the top right of the square for the first round.  Then turn the block and keep adding triangles until you get the first round done.

Then trim up those dog ears and you are ready for the next round of triangles.
Make sure you center the triangles as you add them.  For this round you are sewing bias edges, so don't pull and stretch too much as you sew.  When you finish the second round of triangles, pull one of the blocks out for a filler block.  Continue adding the next set of triangles  to the remaining three blocks.
Sew the four triangles leftover together to make a quarter square triangle block - the second filler block.

And now we just have one more round of triangles to add to our blocks and they will be finished!
Sew the leftover four triangles into pairs:
And admire your finished blocks!
Here is the whole set on the design wall!

If you want to, you can get a start on assembling the pieces and sew the quarter square triangle and half square triangle to the left side of a Snail's Trail block.
Here is the progress so far:

Aren't those Snail's Trail blocks fabulous?  They look like waves, I think!  I am getting more excited with every installment seeing how this is coming together.  There are some really fun blocks ahead, too - I can hardly wait!

Download the pattern by clicking the link below:

Download Pattern Here
*there was a small error in the original instructions which has been corrected.  I had stated to cut a 4 1/4 inch triangle, and that should have been 4 1/4 inch square - sorry for the confusion!

Come back in two weeks for the next block!  Sign up for my newsletter and don't miss any!


3 comments:

Joyce Carter said...

Thank you so much Pamela. Everything is looking really good.

Susan said...

Thank you. I have always wanted to make a snail's trail block and wasn't sure how to go about it. I do like how they look like waves.

Susan said...

Just wondering if there is any easy way to find all your blog posts about each of the Seashore blocks.