Things to Do With Leftover Batting Pieces

Unless you always make quilts the exact size of the batting you purchase, you are eventually going to end up with a bag (or more) of pieces you have trimmed off the pre-cut packaged batting.

I usually buy the same type of batting, so if I end up with a couple good sized left over bits I can piece them together using a fusible quilt batting tape. That is an easy way to create another batting large enough for quilt. I try not to use fuse than 2 pieces of batting a quilt. “Frank-in-batting” isn’t my thing. I worry that too many pieces fused together aren’t going to hold up in a quilt over time. I have tried piecing batting together using the zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine but find that using fusible batting tape is faster and gives a flatter seam.

So, what else to do with the smaller pieces?

Small mats for dogs and cats to donate to your local animal shelter is a great up to use up batting and fabrics. If you are making mats for dogs*, use sturdier/heavier fabrics like pre-washed flannel or home decorating fabric. You can use regular quilting fabrics for cats as they don’t tend to chew on their bedding!

But a new idea, suggested by one of the places our guild donates quilts, is to make burp clothes for babies. This is a great idea, because it can use batting scraps which are smaller than ones that work in other projects. I used washed flannel as top and bottom of the burp cloths I made, with a cotton batting between the layers. Gauze fabrics would be great as well. You do need to use a fabric which is absorbent. I chose to just sew around the edges of my burp cloths, but this would be a great way to try out new free motion quilting designs or to experiment with the programmed stitches in your sewing machine.

I've also used a couple 4 inch square bits of batting as my first underlayer when I make little square pincushions.

These are just some ways I’ve used my left over batting. I’m sure there are lots of other ways to recycle your leftover pieces!

*If you click on the link about the fabrics in the dog mat post, it will take you to Spoonflower.com My shop there is closed so the fabrics I used are not longer available for sale.

Washington Whirlwind Quilt Completed

The Washington Whirlwind Quilt Along was the second, year-long, quilt project I participated in during 2024. These blockd where chosen to illustrate the years that Abraham Lincoln and his family were in the White House. There were 12 blocks in all. There was an option to sew 9 or 12 blocks. I decided to make 9. There are actually only 8 different blocks in my quilt. My 9th one was just too light and too lavender to sit well in the quilt!

I used my stash of 1930’s reproduction flour sack prints in this quilt. The theory is that all the 1930s colors play well together. So I just randomly pulled fabrics I liked each month. In the end I decided that maybe that theory wasn’t exactly accurate! In hindsight, I wish I had paid a bit more attention to coordinating the colors I choice.

This is a bright and lively quilt. I don’t need another sampler quilt, so this will be donated to the guild’s collection of charity quilts, to be given to a new mother and her baby. I think it will make a great tummy time quilt!

Tiny Waldorf Baby in a Valentine Doll Pillow

The shop, A Child’s Dream, which offers supplies for “natural arts, crafts and learning to nurture the child’s sense for life and imagination”, teamed up with renown peg doll creator, Margaret Bloom to create a tutorial and offer a kit to make a Valentine Peg Doll Pillow. Click on the link to see what they created. It’s great!

I started out to make my own peg doll pillow and got as far as sewing the pocket on the front of the heart when I had a thought. I was making this for a child who loves Waldorf dolls. What about making a tiny Waldorf doll, the size of a peg doll? I wasn’t sure I could do it, but the challenge was on!

Once I had the tiny head rolled and covered with stockinette, I knew I could do it! The doll is 2 1/2 inches tall. I could have made her body a bit smaller, but I went with the size of the sleep sack I cut out of cotton velour and didn’t see any reason redo it. I did need to make the pocket a tad longer, but that wasn’t a problem.

The cotton lace sheet was a scrap left over from doll dress. What you see is all I had, so I couldn’t center the middle heart. But, close enough! The knit hat was created from an abandoned baby bootie—I’d knit about 3 inches when I realized my gauge was way off. I just gave up on that project so didn’t bother to unravel it. But it was just what a needed for a tiny knit cap! I cut it down to the right size, sewed up the back and gathered the loops on the upper edge to close the cap.

The doll’s face was drawn using Picma Archival Ink markers. She’s just too tiny to try to embroider her facial features.

The Child’s Dream heart is stuffed with herbs. My heart is stuffed with wool roving from a sheep, just like the doll.

The girl I made this for loves all things tiny! I can’t wait to see her reaction!

(The Child’s Dream is a great place to find art supplies, supplies for making Waldorf dolls, home school supplies and lots of other items in line with Waldorf schooling. It’s a treasure trove! I’ve use them a lot over the years. NOTE: I’m not associated with the store in any way and this is not an affiliate link).

Variations of the Churn Dash Block and a Rabbit Hole!

The Churn Dash or Monkey Wrench block is one of the all time favorite quilt blocks. It has been around for a long time and has multiple names. It is an easy block to make which a lot of visual interest, which I think is part of its appeal.

Change the fabric in the corner half square triangle block, and without changing the pieces used to make the block, you have a block called Chinese Square. (Using a variety of novelty fabrics in the central square. the Chinese Square block would make a great I-Spy quilt for child).

The traditional Monkey Wrench block is on the left, the Chinese Square on the right. (The pictures stack on a mobile device—the Chinese Square is the block with pink completely surrounding the central square).

Here’s a quilt that uses both the Churn Dash and Chinese Square blocks. When I look at it quickly, I have to remind myself that there are two different blocks in this quilt diagram.

Want to change the block again? Take away the paired blocks between the half square triangle blocks in the corners and you have a block called Sho-fly. It’s a simple block. Put it in a quilt and you get a plaid with a ric rack border. I tried taking away the color in the central block, leaving just the 4 triangles. I wondered if that might make an interesting modern quilt. It does nothing interesting. It’s just the same as the quilt below without the interesting yellow cornerstones.

But I had a hunch that this block had potential. So I tried a feature in the Electric Quilt 8 software* called Serendipity which can manipulate a block in a variety of ways. I chose the simplest one—cutting the block into 4 sections. The sections are then rotated and reassembled with the cut yellow squares on the outer edge of the block. Now you have a block which spins! And look at the quilt! It dances. Two names come to mind for the quilt—Christmas Cracker and Orange Grove.

We’ve fallen down a rabbit hole on this post. But haven’t we had fun?

*I used the EQ8 software to do all the designing in this blog post.

Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along 2024: Rainbow Edition Quilt!

It’s done! And I love it! This is my interpretation of Cheryl Arkison’s Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along 2024: Rainbow Edition Quilt. '

Over the course of 50 weeks during 2024, Cheryl Arkison designed 49 new free improv blocks which she demonstrated by sewing each block live on Instagram. She had a pastel rainbow version and a black and white version. The black and white quilt used fabric she designed several years back. They are very different quilts, even though they are using the same block designs.

Because it is all improv, the “patterns” for each block are a suggestion for how to cut and sew your own block. That means each quilter who participates in the sew along will have a unique quilt. But it will feel familiar when you see what everyone else has made.

It’s so much fun!

All the blocks are available in a playlist on Cheryl’s You Tube channel Quilters’ Playcation. You can see what everyone else has made on Instagram by using the hashtags #qpadventuresewalong2024, #qpadventuresewalong or #quiltersplaycation.

I didn’t have enough yardage of a single fabric in my stash to make the back, so I made 3 more blocks and pieced what I had. The tree and the curved blocks are my own designs and the label is a repeat of the block from week 21.

I started off the year with a purchased stack of fat quarters with a palate of greens, yellows and greys. But I also had a stack of bright fat quarters which I planned to use as pops of colors here and there. As the weather got warmer, so did the blocks in my quilt! I had to make myself back off some weeks and just use the original colors!

My background fabric is a plain white. Cheryl alternated the blocks, one week using the background fabric and the next just the featured colors. When I started the sew along, I just let the blocks be the size they turned out. But as the year went on, my blocks standardized first to 9 inches square and then at 9.75 inches square. When I sewed the rows together, I rotated some of the blocks to get the heights to match and added a bright floral to fill in the gaps. It’s improv, so whatever works is great -- as long as I like it!

I quilted each of the 49 blocks and the filler blocks differently. I only used my walking foot. It was a lot of starting and stopping. I’m hopeless and sewing straight lines using a free motion foot so that wasn’t an option! I Some of the curves were just too tight to machine sew, so I added some big stitch hand sewing on those blocks, and in a few others, just for fun.

This has to be one of my all time favorite quilts. I love the blocks, but it’s the colors that really resonate with me.

Many thanks to Cheryl Arkison for her generosity creating these blocks for free but most of all for sharing her love of playing with fabric!

Waterwheel Quilt

This quilt is made with a block called Waterwheel. The alternate block is the same block, except that the half square triangles in the waterwheel block are replaced by solid squares.

The quilt has a chain pattern in the alternate blocks but because the chain is white, it’s not obvious.

Because the block is supposed to be a waterwheel, I hand quilted a circle in the middle of each of the wheels. I thought it would take me a quite a while to do the hand stitching but it went quickly. I drew around a mason jar with a chalk pencil for fabrics and then did a running stitch over the chalk line. I ran a 1+ inch of thread through the layers to start the stitching, did a tiny first stitch to lock the thread and then started stitching over the lock stitch. At the end took another tiny stitch, ran the thread back through the layer a couple inches, pulled the needle up and cut the thread. That’s how I was taught to do hand quilting.

Looking through my stash, the fabric that matched best is a Christmas tree and bird fabric. So here’s a quilt that can stay out from Advent to Valentine’s Day. I do like a multi-season quilt.

And the Play Continues

The 2024 Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along has wrapped up but I’m still playing!

I hunted through my stash for a suitable backing for the quilt, but I rarely buy multiple yards of fabric. There were a couple good choices but both were only 2 yards and I needed 3 or more.

I decided to make some 15 inch improv blocks to created a panel so that I could use what I had. There needed to be some curves in one of the blocks, as they are one of Cheryl Arkison’s favorite things! Once I had a pair of curved blocks, I found I had 2 left over curved sections. (These blocks are made by layering 2 squares together, right sides up, and cutting a curved section out of one corner. The corner section on the bottom layer can be used as a template for another to cut another block). So my “discard” corners became the basis of the next set…and it just kept going until I finally said enough!

I had 3 green squares on my table from the quilt fabric. I realized that if I sewed one pair together and stacked the 3 on top, I’d have the beginning of a tree. I kept adding strips until I had the height I wanted and then cut added a trunk and added background triangles to each side of the green stack, making a tree shape.

The final block is a repeat of Block 21, which I particularly liked. The center of the block is a piece of background fabric, perfect for the quilt label.

I sewed a panel of these three blocks with adding strips of a airy green and white leafy fabric left over from another quilt. The completed back consists of one 2 yard length of fabric, and two pieced narrow panels of second fabric flanking the panel of improv blocks. It didn’t just make do, it makes the back as much fun as the quilt.

Quilter Playcation Adventure Sew Along 2024, Rainbow Edition top

50+ weeks, 49 improvisational blocks designed by Cheryl Arkison. Every Tuesday Cheryl would appear on Instagram at 2PM Mountain time, give us a new free block design and show us how to sew it together. Sometimes she had one done and other times she was partly designing (or maybe she prefer to say playing on the spot).

Cheryl made a black and white version from fabric she’d designed years ago and a pastel rainbow edition.

I decided to try using a “rainbow” of analogous colors with occasion pops of a brighter color. I stuck with that color scheme for the 14 weeks of winter and early spring, but as the weather got warmer, so did my blocks!

Every few weeks I’d try to cool down a block or two and then the brights would be right back!

I’m really happy with the way these 49 blocks have come together. Cheryl alternated blocks with a background fabric with blocks of just the colored fabrics. Not having a good sense of where we were being taken, I let my initial blocks be the size they wanted to be. So that meant some additions and occasionally rotating a block when it came time to assemble the blocks. The last 14 blocks are all 9.25 inches finished and the top rows are 8.5 in height and vary in width.

The finished quilt top is currently 64 inches square. Still mulling about the back, but thrilled to have the top done before the end of the year!

Working with Cheryl Arkison every week this year has been so much fun. She had me groaning a few times, but the blocks always got made on time. And I have to say, her scrap bin was always way more interesting than mine, even though we were working on the same project. Still wondering how that was possible!

Happy New Year everyone!

Book Review: All the Beauty in the World

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a book review on my blog. Is it because more of the quilting world is online and not in print? Or because my bookcase with craft books is packed as tight as possible? It’s a good question! But here is a book I want to tell you about.

All the Beauty in the World was written by Patrick Bringley and published by Simon and Shuster Paperbacks in 2023. It’s about Patrick’s time as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. When his older brother died of cancer in his 20s, Patrick needed to get away from his office job at the New Yorker to find some head space to grieve. He found a job as a guard at the Met. He was there 10 years….and ti worked.

When I picked this book up in a bookstore, I was worried it might be focused on his loss. But that’s not the case. It’s about so much more. Patrick found himself surrounded by beauty with lots of time to reflect on the art and on life. And he made friends with the folks with varied ages and multiple ethnic backgrounds who work at the Met as a museum guards and who shared their wisdom with him.

So does this book have anything to do with quilting? It does! While he was working at the museum, there was a show of quilts from Gee’s Bend. I loved reading his take on these quilts. and more amazing, how he compares the process the women followed sewing these quilts to the process of Michelangelo painting a fresco. So great.

Not only did Patrick find the quiet and beauty he needed to grieve, his book brings a similar peace and quiet to the reader. And the line drawings by Maya McMahon of the art work at the Met are so beautiful.

I have a small collection of books that I keep to read and re-read over and over again. They are mostly biographies. This book is definitely getting added to that collection of special books.

Pick up a copy! See what Patrick says about quilters, and about life.

Two Identical Nine Patch Base Blocks with One Variation

Last week I talked about choosing colors that I wanted to work with at this time of year. Pink ais the tint of red. Although they derive from the same primary color, red, it’s a bit unusual to see them together. I like how happy they are. And it is fun to work with them.

I’ve managed to make a bit of progress on my project this week.

I have the components all cut and initial piecing done and am just starting to assemble the blocks. So far I have 2 completed blocks!

The red block is called “Waterwheel” and the pink block is called “Four Patch Chain”. They are the same basic nine patch block with four patches in each corner. The only difference is the half square triangle blocks in the red Waterwheel block. Putting a red square next to the red triangle in the half square triangle gives the block motion. that’s what makes it look like a water wheel.

The colored squares in the four patch blocks of the waterwheel will all be different. I like to think of them as splashes of water as the waterwheel spins.

I don’t think I’ve ever made a quilt before where the alternate block (the pink chain) was the same basic block as the feature block.

It’s all rather satisfying. And exciting.

New Project/Thinking about Color

What’s this?

I wasn’t expecting to make another quilt this year. But I fell in love with a traditional block that I was working with for another project.

I pulled a white on white out of my stash and a medium blue and light blue which was slightly on the grey side. They were okay together, and I left them out to look at them for three days.

I kept thinking “Yes, they are fine together.” Rapidly followed by “I don’t want to work with them.” This is the season of shadows and low sun angles here in New England. I just couldn’t get excited sewing a blue quilt. It would have been fine on the other side of the winter solstice!

In my stash search I found a lot of light pink fabric. I was about to rob yard of red fabric from a set for a three yard quilt. But when I went to get the red, the set was nowhere to be found! (I’m sure I set it aside to sell at our guild’s upcoming spring show).

Looking in my bin of solids, I realized I probably had enough other reds to make the small quilt I was planning. I thought I might have to use an assortment of reds but there was just enough on one piece to work.

Pink, red and white, with splashes of other colors. Definitely happy and cheerful collection of fabrics! Now I’m excited.

Color matters!

"Piece of Cake" 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt Completed

It took me a long time to get around to quilting this top which I finished in June. It sat around all summer, waiting! Seems appropriate to have finished now because this quilt feels very autumnal.

The pattern is called “Piece of Cake”, Karen Montgomery’s 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt. My Brown Bag came from O’Sewpersonal in O’Fallon, Missouri. I exchanged two fabrics in my bag for 2 alternates in the same fabric line, Kim Diehl’s “Quiet Grace” line printed by Henry Glass & Co., Inc.

The colors in the fabrics are outside of my comfort zone. I tend toward bright primary colors or pastels. So I didn’t love with this quilt while I was working on it. It was only today, when I hung the finished quilt on the clothes line that realized that it really is a beautiful quilt.

I mostly used straight line quilting but there are free-motion quilted daisy-like flowers in the rust colored blocks and tiny clusters of berries in the setting border blocks which echo the berries in the black fabric.

The quilt is turned on it’s side in the photo above so that it didn’t drag in the dusty ground. Here is a photo of the quilt rotated.

Image rotated to show the quilt as it’s intended to be shown.

And finally a couple of pictures of my assistant, who has taken an active part in the assembly of this quilt. Click to see him earlier in the process. Seems like he thinks he’s the subject of my photograph and then turns around and realizes that maybe he isn’t the star this time!

Double Irish Chain Quilt "Elusive Foxes"

Here is my lap size Double Irish Chain quilt I’ve named “Elusive Foxes” because the foxes in the fabric appear and disappear at random. I cut the fox fabric in strips and didn’t fussy cut the foxes to have them centered in the pieces.

This is a small quilt l because I just wanted to trying making a Double Irish Chain. It was only intended to be an exercise in quilting, but it’s turned out to be a sweet little quilt.

To really see the striking chaining design, this quilt is best viewed from a distance.

I quilted the open space in the blocks with a single flower. You can’t see the quilted flowers because the fabric is so busy. But I know they are there!

Here is close-up of a quilted flower and the back of the quilt showing the fox fabric.

5 1/2 Inch Tiny Baby Waldorf Type Doll

A young friend of my asked for a tiny Waldorf type doll. I haven’t made any dolls for a couple years and was actually thinking about making a twelve to thirteen inch doll just for the fun of doing it. Tiny dolls are a real challenge, just because they are so small. I had designed a pattern a few years ago, so it was just a matter of gathering up some scrap doll cloth and knuckling down to work.

I did solve one of my long-standing issues making doll bodies. Because the doll is tiny, I decreased the length of the zig-zag stitch I use to sew the doll skin. In the past I’ve never liked how the stitches showed when I stuffed the doll with wool roving. I stuffed this baby tighter than I usually do, and the stitches did exactly what they are supposed to do—held tight and stayed out of sight! One problem solved for any future doll I make!

Being so small, I wasn’t able to do my typical eye shape. While I’m not super thrilled with these eyes, that’s who she decided to be! I would make her legs a tad longer if I ever make another tiny baby doll. Not sure that I ever will!

Here is a gallery of the doll and her clothes. (The backdrop for these photos are blocks from my version of Cheryl Arkison’s Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along 2024—Rainbow edition).

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Here’s link to photos of the tiny Waldorf type doll that I made in 2020. The clothes have definitely improved since then! It’s really hard to sew clothing this small! I had to go back and re-sew several seams because they fabric didn’t catch well in the stitching.

"Peek-a-Boo Cats" with a Road Map Baby Quilt

This was a fun quilt to make. The block is called “Children’s Delight” from the Electric Quilt 8 Block Library. By itself, the block look like it is really asymmetric but dropped in the quilt it is a grid…except that the right side of the quilt doesn’t have any sashing.

The cats in this quilt are two different sizes. I could have fussy cut the larger cat so that there would have been one in each block, but I rather like them appearing and disappearing across the quilt.

I designed the quilt to be the exact size as this great road map panel which I had in my stash.

Road Map panel with 2 Matchbook vehicles, a red car and a tractor pulling an open cart, from my toy chest.

I had to be very careful when I sandwiched this quilt because the top and bottom were exactly the same size. The batting was larger, so I had to check and recheck to make sure the pieced top and the panel were accurately aligned. I thought I had done a pretty good job but didn’t really know until I trimmed the quilt before binding it. It turned out to be very slightly off. Not up to NASA standards, but something I was easily able to remedy with my rotary cutter!

To go with this quilt, I found two little wooden unpainted cars with tops that are also hand grips, perfect for a toddler. They are too large for the panel’s roadway, but the right size for a little tyke. The tiny cars can come later, once he’s older.

Courthouse Steps Block

This is the 8th block in the Washington Whirlwind quilt along hosted by Barbara Brackman and available on her Civil War Quilts blog.

This block this month is actually named White House Steps but it is a a traditional Courthouse Steps block, a log cabin variation.

The other blocks I’ve sewn for this quilt are red white and blue and orange and lavender. I wanted a block with a different set of colors to help tie the 2 color sets together. You wouldn’t think that red, blue, orange, lavender, green, yellow and blue would ever play well together. But they these are all 1930’s reproductions, and because of that, they will. I think the designers of the original feed sack fabrics, intentionally picked colors that blended well. Intentional or not, it happens that they always seem to coordinate very well.

One more block for this quilt, as I’ve chosen to use the on-point 9 block layout. More on that soon!

Double Irish Chain Quilt Top with Elusive Foxes

I needed to cut a some extra strips to finish my double Irish chain quilt and finally found the time to get that done. It enjoyed assembling this quilt top, but I must say, I didn’t realize how awesome the dark green double chain is until I hung it up and stepped back to take this photo.

I think that the 4 tiny tossed green floral prints in the alternate blocks might detract from the overall look of the quilt. I can see how stunning a double Irish chain could be with just a solid color and with white alternate blocks. I can see blue and white, green and white, or red and white.

I made this quilt just for fun, with fabrics I had, just to try making a double Irish chain. So accomplishedmy goal. I learned I could strip piece sections of the blocks and and if the back ground were a single fabric, then the entire block could be strip pieced. I would recommend cutting the fabric strips to half width of fabric (approximately 21 inches) as the shorter strips are easier to handle. That’s what I did when I sewed the strip sets for this quilt.

The backing is going to be the fox fabric, so this is going to be lots of fun when it is finished.

Apple Doll Quilt

Here’s the completed Apple Doll Quilt. It’s too small for an IKEA doll bed or to be used as a quilt for some of the popular 18 inch dolls. But it’s perfect for a small Waldorf doll or a Hazel Village doll or animal.

It’s the new Limited Edition visiting Hazel Village animal, Clara Otter, who is relaxing under this little quilt. Her bed is a cardboard flat that originally was used to protect a case of canned dog food from dents during shipping. Not only is it comfy, but it’s perfect for Clara as the Hazel Village animals like to create things they need from other available items.

I designed the tiny tossed apple print fabric which was printed at Spoonflower.com a long time ago. The fabric isn’t currently available for purchase.

Notice: This blog is not monetized: I do not use affiliate links. When there are links in a post, they are to give credit to another creative person, because I like or have used a product, or to help the reader easily find supplies for a project.

Doll Quilt in Progress: From Trash to Treasure

I’ve been quilting for HOW long?? And still I made an avoidable error. I recently purchased a pattern. When I read the instructions for cutting the fabric and looked at the instructions I knew that there was serious error for cutting part of the pattern. I should have drawn the block in EQ8 and checked it, which is what I did…eventually…but instead I just went head and cut out the fabric as directed.

I thought I could wing it, or change some other parts of the pattern and make it work. I re-cut a lot of the pieces, but no. The half square triangles (HSTs) were never going to work.

I could have just tossed the lot, but years ago I designed the apple fabric and had it printed at Spoonflower. No way I was tossing it!

It didn’t take me long to figure it that the orphan patches would make a sweet doll quilt. I laid the HSTs out in lots of different patterns but finally decided I liked a simplest layout. I got it all sewed together and looked at it for a few days. Nice, but it could be better.

I couldn’t be believe I was doing this for a doll quilt, but I took off the borders to added an inner red strip. I made raised flange from a 1 1/8 inch strip of red fabric. I folded the strip in half the long way and pressed. Then I sewed it to the pieced blocks using a very scant 1/4 inch seam. And finally reattached the apple border using a full 1/4 inch seam.

Doll quilt sandwiched, basted and ready to quilt

I do like version #2 better, though there was really nothing wrong with version #1! It’s all sandwiched, using up a remnant of cotton quilt batting, and is ready to quilt.

The puppy had surgery two days ago, so this will have to wait. The pup is sore, but doing well, but I’ll doing quiet tasks to be near her until she’s feeling better.

Once the it’s quilted, I’m planning on adding red binding. A doll somewhere is going to be toasty wrapped in her quilt, maybe dreaming of making an apple pie for her little person!

What I learned sewing the "Whirling Star" Block

The July block in the Civil War Quilts Sew Along 2024 is the “Whirling Star” block from BlockBase+. It is #3295 and attributed to Nancy Cabot. You can get the pattern from the preceding link if you don’t own a copy of BlockBase+.

The block above isn’t perfect, and I know why, as well how I could have made a pristine block. Here’s the scoop. This is a block that needs to be cut using templates. Not my favorite, but doable. I printed off the copy from the Civil Wars Quilts website at 100% and checked the one inch square box on the pattern to see if it was true. It wasn’t. I needed to put the printed sheet in my copier/printer and increase the pattern to 112%. (If you print a copy, check it. Yours might be just fine).

So far, so good. I pulled a cereal box out of the recycling bin to make templates. But then figured that since I was just sewing a single block, cutting the printer paper pattern would be fine. And it was. (If I were going to make multiple blocks, I would have cut them from plastic for quilt templates—readily available from multiple sources online).

How does this block get assembled? Here are the components of the central section of the block:

The center of the block needs to be “sliced” in half. There is a smaller triangle template and a wider one. Sew a pair of the the smaller and wider triangle together. PRESS. (This was my first oops. It was a really hot day, I was sewing upstairs using my Bernina which gives me the most accurate in 1/4 inch seams. The iron was downstairs. I figured I’d just finger press the pieces. NOT a good choice. Each of the seams in this block need to be pressed with a iron. Really!)

Sew 2 sets of triangles together to created half the central octagon. PRESS all the seams in the same direction, as shown in my photo above. This is critical to creating a block that is as flat as possible—not easy as 8 points come together in the center of the block.

Sew the two half octagons together. Then add the small half square triangle to create a square block. Awesome. The hardest part is all done.

Sew together the trio of small triangles that will attach to the central square. Press all these seams in ONE direction, doesn’t matter which way, just be consistent.

Pin the outer triangle sections to the inner square. Check to make sure you have the narrow triangle in the outer section match to the narrow triangle in the central square. It helps to use a dress makers pin to do that. Attach the two pieces, pinning along the 1/4 inch seam (not across it as you would to sew it). Open the block to check for alignment and adjust the two pieces as needed.

That’s it. You should have 1/4 of the background beyond each of the eight points in this block. That allows you to sew this block to another block or sashing without loosing the sharp points.

My center isn’t perfect and the seam allowance beyond the points is better in some places than others. It’s all in the careful pressing…or in my case, the lack of it.

Nevertheless, it was a fun block to make and I learned a lot in the process!