A Homemade Block Tutorial

 

The other night, I was flipping through quilt magazines, mulling project ideas and fell in love with a quilt called "Equivalents" based on the traditional "Moon Over Mountain" block. The quilt was made of mostly soft hued batik fabrics and was so gorgeous.

I got the itch to design my own. The finished block above is a smaller, tighter version of what I saw in the magazine. It reminds me of progress, success, and all things going up. So I'm giving it a strange name, "Health Meter", mostly because I was thinking about my health while drawing it out.

So here follows my first attempt at writing a quilt block tutorial. I've made one block off the pattern I drafted, pieced by hand and it didn't turn out so bad. I'm a novice at curved piecing on a machine, we'll try that another day.
 So here we go:

Health Meter Block Tutorial
finished size 8.5 x 5.5

Materials Needed:

Copy of Templates (found here)
Fabric Scraps at least 7in. sq. and smaller
Thin cardboard
Scissors/ Exact-O Knife
Pencil/Fabric marking chalk
Glue Stick
Hand sewing needle
Thread

Cut from Fabric:

1- 3in. x 4in. (for template A)
2- 2in. x 3in. (for templates B)
2- 2.5in. x 3in. (for templates C & Cr)
2- 1.75in x 5in. (for templates D)
2- 4in. x 7in. (for templates E)

Bottom right and going counterclockwise Pieces A-E

A note about fabric selection: You'll notice that i used seven different fabrics for my block, but it's really up to you. This block could be made using 2- 8 different fabrics. So play a bit, don't be scared!

I glued my block copy onto thin cardboard to make sturdy templates because i'd like to make an entire quilt of these blocks and I need them to last multiple tracings.

Cut out the template pieces along the black lines, I used an Exact-O knife to make nice clean and far more accurate cuts.

Once all you've cut apart the template you're ready to trace your templates onto the fabrics.

Keep in mind, since you've cut your templates from the "finished" block, when cutting out your pieces, add a 1/4" seam allowance around each shape. The drawn template line will act as a nice stitching guide line but don't forget to trace it on the "wrong" side of the fabric.

Sometimes lightly finger pressing the seam allowance around the template helps as well.

Once all your block pieces are cut out including a seam allowance, you can begin hand piecing in the order shown on the template. The numbers 1-5 indicate which seams to stitch and in which order.

Staring with C and Cr, right sides together stitch together using a running stitch and making a few back stitches at the beginning and end. 

I try and make my stitches as small as possible to add strength to the seam.

As you finish each seam, finger press them lightly. 

When putting the curved seams together, I lightly creased a center line in each piece to help match up and pin them together correctly. 

                             

Place a pin at the center where the pieces match, then slowly ease the edges to meet and pin loosely.

      

I am by no means a pro at curved piecing yet, but as far as I can tell, it's just a slow, take your time process. I just stitched slowly, making sure seams matched where they needed to.

When the curved seams are finished, it's very important to clip the edges a bit to allow the fabric to settle into its new curving shape.

And since this block is mostly curves, it's really best to take your time and go slow (did i say that already? haha). I did finish hand piecing the whole thing in under two hours.

Basically the seams are done in order,

pieces C and Cr, and both B and D seams are marked 1.

Next the C/Cr unit is attached to piece E marked by 2.

Then piece A is sewn to the other E piece marked by 3.

And that's it for the curved seams!

Now for the final seams of the block. Start with the seams marked by the 4's. Don't forget to match up the seams of the inner circle and hold with a pin.

When you're stitching by hand, you can go slow enough that matching up the seams is simple. For the final seams marked by the 5 on the diagram, I matched the circle seam lines first and then the point. I just started up one side, slowed at the point, and back down the other side. 

I did have a slight bulking of fabric at the point that i clipped very carefully. And as you've noticed, I failed to take a picture of the set in seam. So you'll just have to try it for yourself!

After the block was finished, I did some pressing and squared up the block to the finished size of 8.5in. x 5.5in. and love how it came out! 

I hope you try it out and share! I'll be opening a Flickr group soon for the Mammal Chupie tutorials. Hope you enjoyed this little block. I can't wait to make more! And boy, it's not easy making these tutorials.....I just knew i'd forget to photograph at least one step haha! Oh well. Pretty good for my first one.