Stepping Stones Quilt Along - Lesson 5, Square in a Square

I'm getting a little bit of early start on this post since I'm also doing a 30 day June Mini Madness Quilt Along and starting that tomorrow morning!  What can I say, I'm feeling a bit restless and crazy so came up with a project for us to get our crazies out in a healthy and fun way.  Anyway, I'll get this post up tonight, then first thing Monday I'll get Mini Madness going!

How was May for you?  Truthfully it was a roller coaster of emotion for me, and I struggled a bit.  Things opening, but everything cancelled.  So much uncertainty.  Still making masks.  Starting back to work at the Quilt shop.  It's surreal and strange, yet time keeps passing and I NEED to be sewing something fun!

This month, you'll be doing lots of sewing - at the end of this month you will have 8 more blocks for your quilt and will be past the half way point for the quilt!  It's not difficult sewing, but lots of repetition.  I give you two different options for making this block.  You can make this block using a stitch and flip technique, or make it in the traditional method of cutting squares and triangles to fit.

I couldn't find any pictures of my construction of this block and had to do some retracing of my steps to figure out why.  I was working with 1/2 yard cuts of fabric, and you can't cut the number of 6 1/2 inch squares needed from that amount of fabric, so I ended up making my square in a square units the traditional way - thus I didn't have any pictures of how to construct them using the stitch and flip technique.  So I got out my fabric and took some pictures just so you all can see how it's done!

So for each square in a square you will need one 6 1/2 inch square of your contrast fabric and four 3 1/2 inch squares of your background.

Draw a diagonal line on the reverse side of all of your background squares.

Stitch the background squares to the corners of the contrast square - do two diagonal ones first.

 Trim 1/4 inch from the seamline.

 Press the seams out.

 Sew two background squares to the two remaining corners.

Trim corners off 1/4 inch from the seam line

 Press the seams out and you are done!  (If you like you can save those cut off corners and use them for some thing later - they make pretty pinwheels!)

To make these units the traditional way, you will cut the center squares at 4 3/4 inches and cut squares at 3 7/8, then cut in half diagonally for triangles.

 Finger press a crease at the center of the square.

 Do the same for the side triangles.

 Match up the creases to center the triangle on the edge of the square

 Sew a 1/4 inch seam.

 Repeat on the opposite side.

Press triangles out and repeat on the remaining sides

 Measure and trim off the dog ears.

Can you tell which square in a square is which?  And I did make a pinwheel out of my extra pieces :)

You will sew two square in a square units to two 6 1/2 squares of your light fabric to complete 12 of these blocks.  (I used 1 square each of 2 similar fabrics for the blocks in my quilt because I was working with 1/2 yard cuts)   I think this will keep you busy for the month of June!  Next month we'll be doing the Dresden plate squares - so we'll be doing some different techniques.  It will be fun!

I'd love to see your color choices and progress, so feel free to share - use the hashtag #steppingstonesquiltalong and #pamelaquilts on instagram so we can find them easily.  I'm resisting the temptation to start a new version, but will be sharing pictures of the four I've made so far as we go!

 

Thanks for quilting along with me!

Buy my pattern here:  Stepping Stones Sampler

Find the list of blog posts here:  Stepping Stones Quilt Along