The Desperate Housewife’s Quilt – Block 3 Evolution

The square to the hourglass to the pinwheel ……..

Welcome to week 3 of the ‘The Desperate Housewife’s Quilt’. Todays block is all about pinwheels and hourglass piecing. Remember, this is not a quilt-a-long. Just follow the blog every week and pick and choose which blocks you would like to make. I will be injecting some uniqueness into traditional blocks, applique, three dimensional, crazy and thread-art blocks. If you make a block you can post it on the Flickr group for everyone to enjoy. Also, I have this nifty button under each post that allows you to save the post as a PDF.

Techniques explored

Accuracy in cutting
Joining multiple seams
Calculating size of squares to make finished pinwheel and hour glass block.

Fabrics

The background is a mixture of similar colours. I chose two solids with a little character to lift the background. For the pinwheels, hourglass and square I used contrasting shades of citrus and lime.

For the brown background, cut pieces as shown below.

For the 3.5″ pinwheel cut 2 x 4″ squares – one lime, one citrus

For the 2.5″ pinwheel cut 2 x 3″ squares – one lime, one citrus

For the 2.5″ hourglass cut 2 x 3″ squares – one lime, one citrus

and cut 1 x lime 1.5″ square

Making pinwheels

Pinwheels are just four HST (half square triangles sewn together with alternating dark and light patterns).

The quick way to make four HST’s is to lay right side together two squares. Sound 1/4″ around the edges and cut diagonally twice through the square – Simple.

Select a light and dark fabric. For the 3.5″ pinwheel I cut 4″ squares ( remember you can always trim back ). The 1/2″ for me seams to be enough to allow a little trim when finished and not too much waste

Place the two squares right side together and sew 1/4″ around edge.

Left – 2.5″ pinwheel block using 3″ squares
Right – 3.5″ block using 4″ squares

Using a squaring ruler, cut once diagonally.

and without moving apart the cur fabric, make another diagonal cut in the opposite direction.

Press open all the seams and you will have four HST’ ready to be arranged for sewing.

Remove the ‘rabbit ears’ ready for sewing. Arrange the HST’s so they alternate dark / light.

Sew the top HST’s together being careful to match the points and repeat for the bottom HST’s.

Press open the seams. Join the top and bottom sections together. Press open the seam and then trim back to 3.5″.

Repeat for the 2.5″ pinwheel block.

Hourglass block
Cut 2 x 3″ squares and lay them right sides together.

Draw a pencil line form corner to corner. Sew 1/4″ on either side of the line.

Cut on the pencil line and then make a another diagonal cut in the opposite direction.

This technique will yield 4 x HST. We only need two for this block. Remove the ‘rabbit ears’ and sew the two triangles together.

Trim back the hourglass block to 2.5″.

Now you should have 1 x 3.5″ pinwheel, 1 x 2.5′ hourglass, 1 x 1.5″ square and 1 x 2.5″ pinwheel.

Layout the finished blocks and brown pieces as per the diagram below

and then sew each row and join finished rows together.

You can have a lot of fun with this block. Try replacing some of the background pieces with different colours.

Original Block

Pattern 1 – Rotation and colour replacement

Pattern 2 – Rotation and colour replacement

Pattern 3 – Rotation and more colour adaption.

On point, no rotation

The following examples are all on-point settings with rotation of the blocks.

This one reminds me of Stalactites and Stalagmites in a cave

Out guest blogger for next week will be Deanna

*** Please remember that these blocks and any blocks designed by guest bloggers should not be used for commercial purposes ( sold as a pattern, published etc) without the written consent of the owner ***