Passing the Days: Day 38

It's the Pirate's Life for Me.  I just cannot help thinking of pirates as I make today's block.  It has nothing to do with pirates.  The name of the block is The Five Spot.  But everytime I see that I think of the black spot that plays a part in many pirate stories.  While it was never a good sign in the life of a pirate The Five Spot is a beauty of a block.

The corner units actually go together nicely using a slight variation to the method I use for split quarter-square triangles.  So I start by sewing one of the small triangles to the side of my square.

After pressing the triangle I add the second one.

Instead of starting at the ponty end I have flipped the pieces over so that I begin sewing on the square edge.

I check to make sure that the pieced section is the same size as the large triangle.

Then I went ahead and trimmed off those "ears" sticking out.

To sew these two triangles together I placed a little spot of glue on one end to hold those points together.  A pin would work also.  I just have come to prefer my glue stick.

When I begin to sew I lay the piece under my presser foot right up next to my needle-which I have in the down position.  I find this helps to give me a straight start to my seam.  As I am sewing on the bias edges here, which are stretchy, I am going to sew slowly being careful not to stretch the fabric as I guide it along.

I really like this.  And it is not nearly as hard to do as it looks at first glance.

I think the most tedious part of this whole block was drawing the lines
on the backs of all these little squares in preparation
​ for making the quick corner triangles.

When it comes to those quick-corner triangles be sure and sew just to the outside of the drawn line.  Notice my needle is right beside the line, not on top of it.

A little trick for keeping these units perfectly square...
Sometimes when you fold the top triangle over it extends past the square that is underneath.  Before trimming the large square away I first use it to square up the triangle.  To do this I have already pressed the small triangle into place.

Here you can see that the white of the triangle no longer extends beyond the square.  Once I have done that little bit of trimming I can go ahead and cut away the extra layers of fabric and press once again.  This does involve an extra pressing step, but does solve any issues of not ending up with a squared square.

The only other issue comes when piecing everything together.  As you can see we have some points we need to match.

That is where a little pinning trick I use comes into play.  I have stuck this pin in the points, both front and back, of both squares.  It is important for the pin to go in at the point and come out at the point on the other side at the exact tip on both units.

I slide the pin all the way through until just the head is against the fabric.  Notice it is at the point on this side as well.  That is what I mean by the pin needing to go in at the point on both sides of the fabric.  Next I have placed two pins as close as I can get them on each side of my original pin.

Here is another angle of those pins.  Once those two pins are in place I need to remove the original pin that was holding the points together.

Now I am ready to sew.  When I come to the first pin I stop my machine with the needle in the down position.  Then I carefully remove the first pin, sew very slowly to the next pin and stop again, needle down.  I remove the second pin in the same way and then proceed to sew again.  I already showed you how well this allowed those points to match.

As for the rest, just pin as needed to join the block together.

For a pdf pattern for this block click on the link below:
Passing the Days pdf Patterns

I hope you have some fun today and
​Happy Quilting!!