As I mentioned in my previous post on Swoon block, I am trying different ways of making these blocks. For this block, Swoon #3, I tried to make the yellow pieces one piece of fabric rather than cutting them into squares and half square triangles. I want to preserve the print as much as possible and not have those sections look choppy. I thought segments of the first Swoon block looked choppy.
I am very pleased with how this block turned out. The road was rocky, however, and I fiddled with it a lot. This block was on my design wall for a long time before I actually sewed it together.
First, I made the HSTs on the very outside of the block (pink dot and background) using my Triangle Technique.
Next, I cut 4.5″ squares for all the yellow pieces in the block (8 total).
Third, I cut 2.5″ squares out of the background fabric and the pink dot fabric. I sewed them on to the yellow, larger squares by drawing a line diagonally across the center of the smaller squares and sewing on that line. The goal was to fold the square back into a triangle.
After sewing the first one, I realized that sewing on the line was not the way to go. Folding back the square into a triangle did not cover the yellow 4.5″ square. I tried lining up the line on the small square with the inside edge of my 1/4″ foot, then I sewed just inside the line. That was just enough to make this technique work for me. I have tried to illustrate this part of the post with the photo of the piece (left) in the machine. Can you see how the foot is lined up with that drawn line?
There is a failure part of this blog post as well. In order to make sure the blocks would be large enough to cover the corners of the larger square, I cut the smaller (corner) squares larger than 2.5″ the first time around. I found, when I sewed them on that the idea was good, but didn’t work. The reason it didn’t work was because the squares were simply too big and went below the place they should have been. This meant that the quarter inch seam allowance was too large to produce good matching seams.
Once I had the correct size of squares down (thanks, TFQ!) and realized I needed to sew just inside the seam, the block flew together as much as an approximately 63 piece block can.
I am pleased with the look.
_____________________
First two Swoon blocks link