September Tutorial for Hive 9

Happy September everyone!

I’m very excited to have you all help me make a quilt for my niece and her wife! I had made them an Ohio Star quilt before I knew they planned to get married. When I make a wedding quilt, I try to make one with intertwining circles. I told them I would make another quilt with circles.

I’ve been following Sharon Holland and Maureen Cracknell’s Sewcial Bee Samplers sew-along and when I saw Sharon’s block #19, I thought it would be a great block for Anne and Kristen’s quilt. I have contacted Sharon Holland and she has graciously given me permission to use her block!

Here’s the link to the sew-along https://www.sharonhollanddesigns.com/sew-along/

If you scroll through and click on block 19, you’ll open the pdf for Circle of Friends.

I would like to make the block bigger-15x15 finished, so all HSTs and center square should be cut to 3” so they finish at 2 ½” in the block.

For my block, I would like the following colors – Fabric A-pale green, Fabric B-grey, and Fabric C-pale yellow. The colors were Anne and Kristen’s request, placement was my idea!

These are my two sample blocks:

For the one the top block, I decided to make HST the traditional way-cut 16 squares each of grey and green to 3 ¾”, marked diagonal from corner to corner, right sides together and sew ¼” on either side of line. Trim to 3” squares.

For the bottom block, I decided to use Sharon’s method—this was my first time doing HSTs this way. Cut 4 squares each of grey and green at 6 ¾” and follow her directions. I did trim these to 3” after cutting although they were very very close to 3”. There’s much less waste with Sharon’s method as you from this picture! You decide which method you want to use.

For this block, please don’t use a scant 1/4”-I did on the top block and it ended up at 16” rather than at 15½”. Also, please press the seams open. On the top, I pressed to the dark and some of the seams were very bulky—came out much better on the bottom! I’ll end up taking the right block apart and re-sewing. No need to trim your blocks-I’ll take care of that when I get them all.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

I look forward to putting all the blocks together and gifting it to Anne and Kristen! Thank you so much in advance!
Liz