HOW TO MAKE HOURGLASS BLOCKS..

I have wanted to have a go at making an hour glass block quilt for a while, and then I was further inspired when I saw an hour glass quilt made by Rita at redpepperquilts.com.

I started by cutting 14cm squares from both patterned (or in this case coloured)  and plain white cotton fabric...

Then I placed the white on top of the print/coloured fabric and drew a line from corner to corner...

Sew on each side of this line, I used the width of the sewing machine foot as a guide...

With your rotary cutter/scissors cut along the line that you drew, then without moving the block cut diagonally across in the opposite direction (again corner to corner)...

Open up each piece and press the seam towards the coloured/darker side...

Put  two pieces together matching the seams, and you should have two blocks like this...

Now its only a matter of cutting, pressing and sewing all these ones together !!

I might get on a bit better if I did not have my little 'helper' Clemmie asking "Can I just use this bit Mummy ?" !

TO BE CONTINUED....

I was featured in a post about  'Lovely Linen' written by Karen at blondedesign.blogspot.com she picked her favourite linen from Folksy and she chose one of my cushions !, see them here meandma.folksy.com (You can also see the Summer dresses that I listed yesterday). !

I have finished two, yes two ! quilts this week, well actually, one was a remake of a quilt I made about six months ago for Hebe, I have learnt so much about quilting in those six months, how to quilt, bind, which batting/wadding to use (I use Hobbs Heirloom Premium Batting  which I buy from here cottonpatch.co.uk, there are many different types of batting, but I have found this one lovely to sew with).  I did not 'quilt' or bind the original quilt and used a summer weight duvet as the inner ! (told you I have learnt a lot), it did not actually look that bad...

But after unpicking it all and quilting and binding it properly, it now looks like this...

So much better, don't you think ?...

The second quilt is a commission for a little boys Christening...Had a couple of problems with this one, being given the wrong spelling of the name and realising when it was at the binding stay did not help, but hey ho these things are sent to test us, and I am very pleased with the finished result...

View of the back...

Lovely bound edges...

I am putting together some information about machine sewing binding, I know the purists amongst quilters would NEVER do it this way, but I actually like the finish and it saves SO much time !

More of that to come, til next time...