I knew I wanted to do something Valentine’s Day-ish but I wasn’t sure what. This quilt will probably end up with a man so I didn’t want it to be too girly. Then I saw a picture of a patriotic heart block. That was perfect.
There weren’t any directions so I sketched it out and had some quality time with Pythagoras to get the sizes. I figured since I did the math I would make a tutorial for exactly how I made it.
Cut 1.5″ strips of red and white
Make a 10.5″ long strip set of red – white – red and a 5.5″ strip set of red – white.
Cut a 2.5″ x 5.5″ rectangle of blue print and sew it to the red – white strip set.
Cut a 5.5″ square of blue print and a 5.5″ square of white. Sew them together. Sew this to the red – white – red strip.
Cut out a 5.5″ square of white. Cut it once on the diagonal. Sew it to the sides of the blue squares as shown.
Cut a 8.5″ square of white on the diagonal. Sew it to the other corners.
Your block now looks like this.
Take a ruler and start to square it up. Use colorful language when you realize that the width is about 14″ and you had calculated a 12″ block. Decide that Pythagoras was a dirty liar. You could make a 14″ block here by squaring it up and then adding borders to the top and bottom to make it 14″ all the way around. I’m making a 12″ sampler so I took a deep breath, centered the block, and cut the width to 12.5″. Then I added a small border on the bottom to make it square.
Of course, you could always over size the white triangles (now that we know that Path was a liar) and then trim to whatever size you want. I like the cut-off sides. Makes it look more round. Thanks for doing this
Thank you for the tutorial, I had to pin it
http://pinterest.com/pin/271130840038828273/
hope you don’t mind and if you do just let me know.