Hive 9 June Block Tutorial

Hi, Jacki here – in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. My husband of 30+ years and I just moved down here from Northern Virginia. I’m still a little ‘grumpy cat’ about the move, but as soon as I’ve got my studio set the way I want, and my yard under control this will be a great place to live. I’ve already found the local fabric shops, and there are some great ones.  When everything seemed to be falling to pieces I'd run to a quilt shop. Just touching the fabrics helped restore balance. (lol) If you downloaded the address list at the beginning of the year please double check the address you have for me. I updated my info in February, so the Google doc is currently correct, but if you saved it to your computer before then your copy might be out of date.

      This month I’d like you to make a black and white block with a twist, using one black-on-white fabric and one white-on-black fabric. If you have them I would prefer geometrics and other fabrics that read modern rather than florals. Here are a handful I pulled from my stash. If you don’t have any, let me know and I’ll send some right out to you.

        The block I’ve picked is one of Jenny Doan’s Disappearing Pinwheel series with a simple size change to make your measuring easier. I’d like you to use 10½ inch squares. The block we are making is the Disappearing Pinwheel 3, a friendship star with an Illinois roads as the secondary block.  The fabrics should give a modern spin to this traditional block, and I have an avian inspired setting in mind for the finished piece.

You can check out Jenny’s tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrOasfMpyXo - then come back and we’ll walk through the steps using real numbers.

Caution: Near the end of the tutorial the quilt hanging behind Jenny changes to a different block.  

Step 1

Cut two  10 ½ inch squares. Place them right sides together, and sew around all four sides using a scant ¼ inch seam.

Step 2

Cut the sewn fabric diagonally in both directions. Iron the pieces open (press to the dark, or with open seams), arrange in a pinwheel and sew the pieces together.

• Jenny zips through the rest of the steps without mentioning that from here on out every edge is a bias edge. Just go slowly, use your sizing liberally and don’t pull the fabric too much. It all works beautifully if you are gentle. <Insert Zen gong here?>

 For my purposes when you arrange your pinwheel it does not matter which direction the blades are spinning.

Step 3

Your assembled pinwheel block is a little larger than 13 ½ inches. Square it off to exactly 13 ½ inches. Please do not skip this step, it makes all the difference in next step.

Step 4

Now we cut the squared pinwheel into a nine-patch. Each piece will be a 4 ½ inch square.

Because you’ve squared the block you can measure in from each side. Or, if you are unsure about the square-ness of your block, make your cuts 2¼ inches in each direction from the center line (math mavens instantly saw how that measurement worked, the rest of us just take it on faith, lol)

• In her tutorial Jenny makes two cuts, rotates the fabric and slashes away boldly producing perfect squares. Being more timid, I first cut the pinwheel into 3 strips (4 ½ by 13 ½) and then worked with each strip separately to cut the 4 ½ inch squares.

Step 5

Now comes the fun part.

The friendship star may be black or white. The flat (vertical?) side of the top point may be on the left or the right.

Keeping the center piece in the center, follow the pictures and/or check back with Jenny (at 6:10) and rearrange the outer pieces to make your friendship star.

Arrange the star first, then add the corner blocks. Notice how the corner blocks create a frame around the star. Also, the corner block next to the flat side of the point is parallel to that flat side.

Now, for this month’s question.

This month the question is less about sharing facts and more about expressing personality. Look at my concept below. The working name for the quilt is Friendship in Flight. My question is this: are the blocks landing, taking off, or just milling about? Tell us why, feeling free to be analytical, or Zen in your answer. Oh, and don’t take the question too seriously, we’re not analyzing anyone.  I’ll add my answer at the end of the month to avoid undue influence. LOL. I hope you have fun with this block. JackiB