Passing the Days: Day 24

Have you ever looked closely at a soap bubble?  They are a riot of color.  I just wanted to make something colorful today.  I had fun looking through my fabric collection to see what fit the bill.  I am taking Cheryl Sleboda of Muppin.coms suggestion in her live Facebook yesterday.  We tend to call them stashes, but that has a negative connotation.  We are fabric collectors.  Like art collectors or stamp collectors or whatever.  So let me change my paradigm from Stash Busting to Collection Dispersing.  I realized today that part of what I am enjoying is the time I am taking to really look at the fabrics in my collection.  Many are like old friends from times past that I have not seen in a while and I have enjoyed getting reacquainted with them.  I also chose one of my favorite star blocks for today.  The Ohio Star.

For this block I am revisiting making Hourglass units.  And since I am making four different colors that means I actually needed to cut 4 white squares to go with each color of the other fabrics.  In my pattern I gave cutting directions for the traditional  option of making it all one color.

On to my tips for the block...When sewing I try to have the seam pointing to my needle as I sew if at all possible.  I find it is just an added help to get those two matching seams butted up against each other.

Do you ever have those moments when you just go, "What was I thinking?"  I had one of those today.  Why was I fussing with a scant 1/4" seam to make these?  So I cut the squares a little bigger and guess what?  I could use my regular seam allowance and the trimming went well too.  I just had to laugh at myself for being so slow to come around to the obvious solution.
To trim these to the correct size line up the diagonal line on your ruler with that diagonal seam line.  You will notice that I have the 1 1/4" mark at the center intersection of all the seams.  That ensures this will be the center of your hourglass unit when you trim it to 2 1 2/".

The end result.

I found that when I was joining everything together I sewed with the plain squares on the top.  I also started slow as there is a seam to sew over and it all stays lined up much better if I sew slowly over those seams.

PDF versions of the block can be found HERE.
You will also want to be sure you have a copy of the General Instruction sheet that shows you my step-by-step for making the Hourglass units.

​I hope you have a joyful day and Happy Quilting!