MODA Blockheads: Block #12

Welcome to Week #12 of the MODA BLOCKHEADS SEW ALONG! This week is brought to you by the fabulous Janet Clare. Her and her husband are a great pair to hang out with at Market… funny, smart and full of so many interesting ideas. Check out her blog HERE. Go check out her fabulous block and her work. Janet’s work is very… well, very Janet and very different from anything else… which is what I really love about it. She definitely has her own soothing, coastal vision. Her block is called HAMPSHIRE STAR… named after the part of England that inspired it.

Go over to her blog to check out her pattern and get all of the directions, etc. CLICK HERE .

We chose the 12″ size… usually when a block has this many pieces I think it is a good choice to stay larger… since I want the fabric pieces to be seen and the work to not be too tedious :-). If you have been following along for a while, you will already know that I am not a big fan of triangle squares unless absolutely necessary and that instead I prefer the sew & flip method. I feel like it has a much better chance of success in terms of your points, it is less work and to be honest… I just like it so much more than having to trim down triangles or working with bias!

So the minute I saw this block, I knew that we would be doing it differently than the original method. I didn’t think I had (48) half square triangles in me :-). So here is what we did below… Please refer to the original diagram to see the corresponding colors with our notes below:

CUTTING INSTRUCTIONS

6″ BLOCK
Grey: (4) 2″ x 2” squares
Dark Blue: (24) 1 ¼” x 1 ¼” squares
Light Blue: (1) 2” x 2” square and (8) 1 ¼” x 1 ¼” squares
Background: (4) 2” x 2” squares [from cream #1] and (12) 1 ¼” x 2” and (20) 1 ¼” x 1 ¼” squares [from cream #2].

8″ BLOCK
Grey: (4) 2 ½” x 2 ½”” squares
Dark Blue: (24) 1 ½” x 1 ½” squares
Light Blue: (1) 2 ½” x 2 ½” square and (8) 1 ½” x 1 ½” squares
Background: (4) 2 ½” x 2 ½” squares [from cream #1] and (12) 1 ½” x 2½” and (20) 1 ½” x 1 ½” squares [from cream #2].

12″ BLOCK
Grey: (4) 3 ½” x 3 ½”” squares
Dark Blue: (24) 2” x 2” squares
Light Blue: (1) 3 ½” x 3 ½” square and (8) 2”x 2” squares
Background: (4) 3 ½” x 3 ½” squares [from cream #1] and (12) 2” x 3½” and (20) 2” x 2” squares [from cream #2].

To see how we constructed our pieces, see below. We made (9) different “square in a square” units, (4) “flying geese” units and finished off the corners with the sew&flip method as well.

To see how our block goes together:

Note that the corners are first just sewn on as standard squares… you could just leave them that way as well. But if you want to make them into triangles like on Janet’s original block, we just continued the “sew&flip” method and sewed those squares onto the corners and flipped them out just like we did with the rest of the sections.

FABRIC CHOICES

We chose 3 different reds [to correspond to the grey, dark blue and light blue colors in the diagram] and 2 different creams, see block for placement.

As you can see, SO FAR we have done (3) 12″, (2) 8″, (6-7) 6″ and (1) 4″ that we plan to repeat when we get a minute.

LAYOUT

MODA has released the layout that we will be using as our choice, CLICK HERE for the PDF of the LAYOUT… we will be making option #2. Toward the end, we will make some final alternations but this will be our general layout throughout the program. We will also add in a few creative sashings at the end.

But for those of you who are wanting to work along with us, this is the tentative block breakdown [plus fillers] that we will be using:

12″ blocks: We will need to make 13.

8″ blocks: We will need to make 10.

6″ blocks: We will need to make 36.

4″ blocks: We will need to make 8 blocks. It is very likely that we might make a few more of Lissa’s sweet heart from last week.

Our quilt will be somewhere around 64″ x 72″… I say “somewhere” because once we add in a few filler rows, it might grow a little bit here or there.

BLOCK RESOURCE

CLICK HERE FOR THE ARCHIVE OF ALL OF THE MODA BLOCKHEADS 3 BLOCKS WE HAVE HAD SO FAR!

The Archive will be updated each week by MODA, in descending chronological order, with the newest block at the top. This is such a fabulous resource! We will keep this link in each week’s post here as a resource.

If you have any questions, ask me in the comments below. Happy sewing friends!

Here is a list of all the designers participating this year in the order that they will post their weekly blocks…

This week: Janet Clare- https://www.robinpickens.com/

1.15 – Corey Yoder – https://corianderquilts.com/
1.22 – Sherri McConnell – https://www.aquiltinglife.com/
1.29 – Betsy Chutchian – http://betsysbestquiltsandmore.blogspot.com/
2.5 – Jan Patek – http://janpatek.blogspot.com/
2.12 – Brigitte Heitland – https://www.brigitteheitland.de/blog
2.19 – Lisa Bongean – https://lisabongean.com/
2.26 – Lissa Alexander – http://modalissa.com/
3.4 – Laurie Simpson – http://minickandsimpson.blogspot.com/
3.11 – Vanessa Goertzen – https://lellaboutique.blogspot.com/
3.18 – Stacy Iest Hsu – https://www.stacyiesthsu.com/blog/
3.25 – Robin Pickens – https://www.robinpickens.com/
4.1 – Janet Clare – http://janetclare.co.uk/blog/
4.8 – Jen Kingwell – www.jenkingwelldesigns.com/blog
4.15 – Joanna Figueroa – https://blog.figtreeandcompany.com/

About The Author

joanna@figtreequilts.com

1 COMMENT

  1. Diane hant | 1st Apr 20

    Thank you for this alternate method! I thought the very same thing when I saw all of those hst’s, and I’m making all 8” blocks so they would be pretty small. Now I don’t have to figure it out myself😘

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