The Great Summer Mystery quilt #3

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The Summer Mystery has now finished and the instructions have been removed. However I have left the tutorial here for you as there are a lot of good tips and tricks in the last 10 posts – just use the category to find all posts. You can now download the full pattern as a working Quizzle from here.

It is sometimes helpful to draw your diagonal lines with your fabric squares on a sheet of sandpaper to hold it still. Because your diagonal line is on the bias without the sandpaper it tends to stretch and slide. This is a fancy clover sandpaper board but you can just use a single sheet or make your own board by gluing it to thin MDF. You may use it quite often as drawing diagonal lines in patchwork and quilting is quite common. A Mechanical (click) pencil is also good so your lines stay nice and thin and accurate.

TIP: To save some time you can stitch squares on to the opposite corners and chain piece them all together. Then trim and press and repeat for the remaining corners.

First attach one to one end then the diagonally opposite corner - don't forget to chain piece them all at once to save time and thread

Okay, see here how there is a double layer of fabric. The spot piece I am lifting up and the blue/stripe piece underneath. We don't need the spot piece, it will just add bulk so we are going to carefully trim it off - it doesn't need to be accurate so you can use a cutter and ruler, just freehand cutter or scissors.

Then it will look like this

Now we press back the remaining triangle of red spot towards the corner. Yes we now have a double layer again but we keep the underneath layer as it is all on the straight grain and will stabalise our unit (some would cut it off but this is my preferred option)

Now we repeat what we did above with the remaining two corners of each unit

and you have all of these triangle scraps left over. Keep them - there are many blocks and designs which use half square triangles like this.....I'll make something out of mine one day and show you.

Nearly there, are you having fun?

hugs, Helen

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