Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a really fun idea for you today. Awhile ago we shot a tutorial called Cornered Drunkard’s Path. The Drunkard’s Path is a really fun block that’s made with a quarter circle in it. And of course we do it the easy way. But as our sewing team was working on it, I said what happens if we put a corner on here? And then one of them said what happens if we put a corner on the opposite side or a half square triangle? And so this is the result of that conversation. And I can hardly wait to show you. So let’s look at this quilt. Isn’t this fun? It looks like you did so much work. So many little pieces. Oh my gosh, it’s so easy though. So I can hardly wait to show you how to do this. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is 3 ¼ yards of your colored fabric. And we have used Kona Cotton Regal by Robert Kaufman. For your background fabric, you’re going to need about 5 ¼ yards of fabric. If you want to use a packet of ten inch squares you can do that. And then you’ll need one packet of those and 2 ½ yards of fabric. Because out of the background comes all of our border and all our extra little squares and things like that. So you do need some extra background fabric. You’re also going to need a circle cut ruler. This is my favorite circle cut ruler and you have to get a little, a rotary cutter that fits into it because it has to have a blade that goes in long. You’re also going to need some fusible because we’re going to fuse our circles onto our squares. So the fusible amount is 3 ¼ yards of fusible. And it’s all going to go together so easy. You’re going to be amazed at how easy this is. So let me show you how to do this.

The first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to take our yardage and we’re going to cut it into eight inch strips. And then we’re going to cut those strips into squares. So eight inch squares like this. And then once you get your square done we’re going to fuse it onto the fusible. So I’ve already cut my little fusible into these little squares. I’m going to go over here to the iron and I’m going to fuse this on here. So you just kind of hold it on there and let that fusible attach itself to the fabric. Because, and when you have fusible on something it actually makes the circle cutting go a little easier. So now our fabric is on here and we’re ready to cut our circles which I like to fold mine in half like this. If you get this fold line right here you’ll see on the ruler it has where it says Fabric Fold Line, right here, the dark solid line. You’re going to lay that on top of your circle or on top of your square. And these are going to be cut 7 ½ inches. And so we want to make sure that this is kind of centered up. And then you take this little rotary cutter and this one just works so well. The blade has to go, it has to clear the edge of the ruler. So you just want to make sure that it, you have a little cutter that will go all the way down in there. And we’re just going to put it down in here and we’re just going to slide it around like this. And watch your fingers. And this should come right off. And it does except this one little spot. Let me grab that. Hang on, there we go. Alright, so then you’ll get your circle like this. And then we’re going to fuse it right on to our square so that just means centering it up. And I generally do that by folding my square in half four ways, matching them up in the middle, and just ironing that on here.

The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to do a blanket stitch all the way around here and that holds it on. And I can show you. I’ve got one blanket stitched right here. Alright so here it is. And because we’ve used the purple thread you can’t see that. But if I turn it over you can see. Here’s our blanket stitch. And it just takes a stitch and goes in and catches that. You can use a little zig zag. You can, you can even straight stitch it, whatever you’d like to do. But you need to sew that on there. And then we’re going to cut this in fourths. Now for this I like to use my ruler here that, that, our Missouri Star ruler because I can lay this right on the edge of my ten inch square and it’s five inches wide and it’s going to cut it right in half. So I’m going to use my big girl rotary cutter now, gotta go to the big one. And we’re going to cut this way and we’re going to cut this way.

Alright, so now when we did the Cornered Drunkard’s Path we put our squares on here, but we got wondering what would happen if we put our squares on here. So when you cut yours in fourths you get four pieces like this and we tried something different. We decided we were going to make some half square triangles and see what they looked like attached to the sides of our square. The little square we’re going for is this right here. You can hardly believe that’s the same thing. But wait til you see. Alright so now we have, here’s our quarter. We’re going to be making some half square triangles to put on the sides. So what we’re going to do is out of our colored yardage and our background yardage we’re going to cut three inch strips and sub cut those into three inch squares. And we’re going to layer them and we’re going to sew a quarter of an inch on either side of this square. So let’s go to the sewing machine and do that. And we’re just going to set our presser foot on here and we’re going to go a quarter of an inch from either side. There we go. I’ve drawn the line on this so it’s easier for you to see. And you can iron it if you want, it’s really your preference. But basically when you draw the line you get to sew a quarter of an inch either side of that line. And then when we cut this apart, it’s going to make two. So I’m going to lay my ruler right on the line, cut this right apart and it’s going to make two of those. So now we’re going to iron those back. And I’m going to put my dark fabric on the top, set my seam and then just roll it back. Whenever you’re doing a two color quilt, and I happen to love two color quilts. I just love the simplicity of that. But when you’re doing a two color quilt you just want to make sure that you try to keep your darker fabric to the darker side.

Alright now we need to square these up. These have to be 2 ½ inches so we went here. So this ruler is kind of fun because the half, any of the half marks are marked in red. And it just goes, it just makes you really be able to see that. So basically you can see here, we hardly even needed to trim that up. I mean it’s just so close to 2 ½ and it just makes things come out a little sharper and a little nicer if you trim it up. Alright let’s go ahead and do this one. This one actually looks a little bit more wonky. I’m not sure why. We never quite know why that happens does it. You’re like, wait I did the same seam. Alright, turn this and let me cut the other side. Keep, you keep this black line right down the center and then we’re just going to trim this off here. There we go, alright. Now we have two good little squares.

Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to attach these to either side of our quarter, the quarter of our circle. And we’re going to make sure that the white goes on the white side and the purple goes on the opposite. Now one of the things that you want to do for this is you want to have a sew line that goes from here to here. And you’ll probably want to draw that because it’s going to make it a little easier to be able to see it. And I have a little pencil right here, right here somewhere. Let me grab it. Actually all I found in that drawer was a sharpie marker so that’s not going to work too well. But I’m going to grab a pen right here which will work fine. You know you don’t see this line because it’s going to be on the back inside your quilt. Alright so now what I’m going to do is I’m going to draw my line right on here. And it is a little hard to see on the dark. So you just want to make sure that you can see it. So now on the sides where our circle kind of moons out to the side, we’re going to put this block and we want to make sure that it’s turned. I had it about three different ways there but it’s going to go the white to the purple and the purple to the white. Just like this. I’m going to stick a little pin in here. And then we’re going to hook the other side one as well. And it’s going to go the same way so make sure that your, your white goes to the purple, opposite colors you know. White goes to the purple and then the purple goes to the white. Alright like that. And we’re just going to sew straight across this way, right on the line. So we’ll go over here and we’re going to sew straight across on here. And we’re sewing on the line. And then we’re going to come around and do the other side. Alright. Now what we’re going to do is trim these off right here. And I’m just, again I’m just going to lay my ruler quarter of an inch from the seam, trim that off, trim this off over here. And then we’re going to iron this out. See how cool that looks. It’s so fun to me when, you know, when one of the girls said, hey have you thought about this. You know, I’m like, oh let’s try that.

So then you’re ready, once you’ve done this to all four of yours, you’re ready to put them back together as blocks. And again we’re just going to match up our circle like this right back together as it was. Just like that. And that’s our block. Is that not the cutest thing? So let’s go ahead and sew this together. And we’re going to sew this together just like a four patch. So I am going to chain piece these which means I”m just going to put one here, sew right down the side.. Then I’m going to lay this other one right in here after it. And sew it. You want to try and match up your colors and your whites as close as you can. They won’t, they won’t always come out perfect but this is one of those that’s pretty forgiving. Alright so now I’m going to open this up, check my seams. It’s good enough for me. And then I’m going to sew these two together. Alright so one more, before I sew these together I want to show you right here. Since this is, since we have a layer of adhesive and we have the two fabrics on top of each other. You know this circle is adhered to the background square, you really want to make sure that your seams are going opposite directions. So when you press them, oop I pressed this one, they’re going the same. It would make a huge lump right here. So we want to make sure that this one is pressed the other way so let me do that. Ouch, I almost burned myself there. Alright so I’m steaming that so it will relax and lay down. Because now the bulk will be shared on either side of that seam and it won’t be bad. So then we’re just going to lay this over here. Match up those two, you can feel there’s nothing between there. And sew right down the side. Alrighty. Now we can press this open. And again I”m going to relax this, roll it back. And then we get to take a look at what we’ve got. Alrighty, so this is our block. How fun is this?

And then when it goes together, I have a little stack of them right here that I made. You are just going to sew these together, all these blocks right together in rows. So they’re going to come together this way. See how that happens right there. And you’re just going to sew them together in rows like this. And because we used 42 squares, you’ve got six across and seven down. Now this is really fun and one of those what happens if, which is my favorite part about quilting. It’s so creative to see what happens if we just put a corner on a different corner, you know if we put a square on a different corner. If we just do one little thing different you get a whole different project. So this was a really fun project. Really fun to see what happens if we just attached a half square triangle to the opposite corner and we got something as awesome as this. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Sweet Blend quilt from the MSQC.