Modern Irish {Scrappy} Bee: August Block

Hello ladies! As the other Bee Mamas have said in their posts ...oh man time flies! So it’s my turn and I hope you like my choice.

I was thinking and thinking and thinking came up with nothing, so I got on to Pinterest and saw this!

Yes it’s a traditional block but I want to have something really colourful and in your face and at the same time an easy block to run up!

Read the next sentence with sincere politeness: I don’t want Jany batiks, browns, flowerly prints, kiddy fabrics.

I would like pretty please, bright cheerful colours if at all possible, warm colours. Again I refer you to Imagingermonkey’s pic for inspiration.

One condition – the centre of the churn dash should be one of your favourite scrappy fabrics.

Scant ¼” is required for sewing the block in certain parts – I interpreted this as just shy of the ¼” mark on your ¼” sewing foot, so please if you could follow that that’d be great, in other words a breath away from ¼” – apologies if I’m saying the same thing 10 different ways but it’s important, if you are unsure just shout out and please don’t be intimidated about this scant thing.

Two blocks please, no need to trim them.

I used CluckCluckSew’s tutorial to make my blocks.

So to get started:

Select three fabrics – one for your centre piece (this should be one of your favourite pieces), plus two other colours. If they clash that’s fine, look at Imagingermonkey’s pic, this the kind of look I’m going for e.g. colourful, clashing.

Cut the following:

Centre piece: 1 - 3 ½” square

Fabric Colour 1: two 3 7/8” squares

Fabric Colour 1: one 2”x15” strip

Fabric Colour 2: two 3 7/8” squares

Fabric Colour 2: one 2”x15” strip

Take a square of Fabric Colour 1 and a square of Fabric Colour 2, on the back of Fabric Colour 1 draw a diagonal line from corner to corner and place face down on Fabric Colour 2. Pin together.

Carefully sew a SCANT ¼” along either side of the diagonal line, so I sewed just inside the ¼” line. Cut along the pencil line and iron the seam towards the darker of the two fabrics. Repeat with remaining squares and you should end up with four Half Square Triangles (HSTs). If in doubt refer to Cluckclucks tutorial. Trim to 3 ½”

Next take your two strips of fabric – right sides together, sew normal ¼”.

Iron seam to darker fabric. Apologies for the different coloured fabric (this is my second block colours, but I forgot to take a pic).

Cut this strip into 3 ½” squares, you will be able to cut 4 squares in total.

Now the fun part, layout your pieces. Make sure the colours are in the right order, sew the pieces into three rows. When pressing your seams of each individual square i would recommend pressing the seams on Row 1 to the leave, Row 2 to the right and Row 3 to the left again, this way the slot in nicely. Any questions email me.