Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’ve got a fun project for you today. Let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this great? Now these blocks to me look just like eights. But you know what they are, this is a disappearing hourglass quilt. Another one of those fun ones that we like and it looks like the shape of the eight so we’re calling it Disappearing Hourglass Crazy Eight. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one pack of ten inch squares. And we have used Sandbar Batiks by Kathy Engle for Island Batik. And you can see, a beautiful line, a lot of color in there. You’re also going to need a packet of ten inch squares of background fabric. And we’ve used this black. If you buy yardage it’s going to be about 3 ¾ yards and that also includes this first inner border right here. The inner border of itself was about ¾ yards. So the outer border out here is a six inch border and you’re going to need 1 ¾ yards for that. For the back, this is a big quilt, and so you’re going to need about eight yards, let me make sure, 8 ½ yards. And it makes this beautiful back right here. This is what we put on ours. You’re going to have vertical seams. So you’re going to have a little bit left over at the bottom because the way you have to stack it together. So you can make pillow cases or something out of that. This quilt is 82 by 93 so it’s a nice big quilt. And, and if you decide to go with your backing, if you decide to go with the 108 you’re just going to need three yards of a 108.

Alright so let me show you how to make this because this is just one of those disappearing blocks and it’s just easy and fun and at the end of the day it looks like you worked really hard. So basically what we’re going to do to start is we’re going to take our black square like this and our colored square and we’re going to put those right sides together. Now you’ll notice with most batiks there really isn’t a wrong or right side and with most solids there really isn’t a wrong or right side. So you can’t really get this wrong. We’re going to lay them on top of each other like this. And we are going to sew all the way around them, a quarter of an inch. Now I have one here that’s already done and you can see that right here. You can see our stitch line on here. So now what we’re going to do is we’re going to take our ruler and we’re going to cut it diagonally side to side. This is one of the reasons I love our ruler is because it’s a, it’s a five by 15 and it just lays perfectly right across there. Don’t worry if you have a little pleat. Don’t worry if you, you know, if, if, if you’re, I mean just put your ruler on there corner to corner and. People say all the time, do you, do you stop and pivot, do you sew right off. I generally sew right off. And I don’t really worry about what’s happening in the corner too much because what I want to do is I want, I want to have four of these.

So once you get your four pieces cut then we need to press them open. Now just a little note on this, as long as your quarter inch seams are consistent, now what that means is the quarter inch doesn’t have to be perfect, but your seams have to be the same on all four sides, these blocks will come out the same. And so what we’re going to do now is we are going to go ahead and press these open. And to do that I’m going to lay, I’m actually going to lay my dark on the top like this and iron them back like this so that my seam stays to the dark side. So this one I’m going to have to change this one around because I kind of finger pressed that a little bit and I’m just going to roll that. You know once you get a seam pressed one way it doesn’t not like to go the other way. So let’s see if we can just make that one behave and this one. And then we’re going to do these two as well. And I’m going to stack these up here. Alright so I’m used to pulling the color up because my background is usually a lighter background. So this is kind of fun. It’s kind of tweaking in my brain when I show you this. Alright so now we’re just going to press these so they lay nice and flat. And we are going to lay these in an hourglass format. Now the easiest way for me to do that is to put them together so that I have two darks coming in opposite sides and then two lights coming in on this side like this. And then what we’re going to do is we’re going to take these to the sewing machine and we are going to sew these two seams right here, you know, these two seams a quarter of an inch. And so I’m just going to lay these over here and I kind of like to start from the middle because your fabric is flat right there. And then I just kind of make this edge fit and behave back here. Alright let’s do this one. And then you just kind of, you can feel those seams nesting right here.

Alright now what we’re going to do is we are going to open these up and make sure they go back into an hourglass like this and then we’re going to sew these down. Alright so line up those edges. Line up that middle. The middle matters so make sure your middle is nice and flush and that it just lays together real nice. You know there are certain things that when I’m sewing I’ll be like, oh this is going to matter so make sure you do those things. And that center seam is one on this pattern. Alright so let’s lay this, iron this nice and flat. Now to make this block, what I do at this point is I measure my block, I find out how wide it is and I divide that measurement by three. So I know that this block is 12 ¾ and so I’m going to be cutting this at, well I could come in from the side and cut 4 ¼ but I prefer my block, I prefer to measure on either side of that center seam. So I’m at 2 ⅛ from that center seam. And we’re going to cut it at 2 ⅛ on all four sides. But you know what I”m going to be smart, let me get my mat, my rotating mat over here because this makes it so much easier. So I’m laying this on here, my rotating mat. Now if you don’t have a rotating mat remember that even if you have a little, a small mat, if you just pick it up and turn that, that mat becomes a rotating mat. So it’s way easier to turn your mat than it is to try and rearrange all of your pieces. So let’s just go ahead, we’re going to go ahead and cut this. And I”m just going to turn my mat and lay it down. Again I’m cutting 2 ⅛ from that center seam and this side. We’re to the third side here. And everybody has their favorite ways of doing this you know. Some cut, you know, side to side and then top to bottom. I just go right around it and here’s my last side. Alright so I’m going to cut here. Now if you ever get a seam that’s like a little wonky just remember that all these blocks are going to work independently of each other so you can actually cut and you know just make sure that your, your blocks are about the same size and your seam stays lined up. So you can cut here, you know, eek your ruler a little bit, cut again, eek your ruler.

Alright so now this is the fun part because these are all, these can all work independently of each other. And so the block we’re going for right here is this one. And once I get one of these blocks done, wait it goes this way. Literally I set it in front of me so I can make sure that they’re all the same. So we’re going to look at this and first thing we’re going to do right here is we’re going to swap these two like this. And then we’re going to swap these two. Alright now we haven’t turned them to the outside, we’ve just swapped each side. I’m going to turn this one like this in the middle. And then I’m going to look at these side pieces. Now only two of them stay out and two stay in so we’re going to turn these in like this and that gives us our crazy eight shape. Now when I’m ready to sew these together I just slide this over by my sewing machine and I do this row right here from the top to the bottom. And so I’m just going to lay these on top of each other and I’m going to sew a quarter inch seam. And I”m just going to sew straight down, don’t take them off and then I’m going to add this next one. This is an easy way to chain piece this block. And then again you want to make sure that this middle line lines up right here. And then one more down here. Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to flip this around like this and open these up and I know now I need to add my bottom so I went through top to bottom. Now we’re going to go in reverse the other way and so we’re just going to add these onto here like this. I hope that made sense. This is just how I do it. You can actually sew them together whatever makes sense in your brain but this is how I do it. Make sure my middle lines up right here and then my last one is right here. And on these corner ones you want to look and make sure that you have sewed on the one you’re putting on matches that one. So this will go with the little corner into the middle. Let me get this thread over here. And line that up. Now we should have this ready to go so we can just sew these rows together like this. So we’re going to open it and look at it again. And again you can see the eight pattern on there. So now I’m just going to fold this over. And you can iron, you can press here if you want. I’m going to press, I’m going to sew first and then press because I want to be able to manipulate my seams and decide which way I want them to go. So my middle seams are going to go in and my outer seams are going to go out. And then we make sure that middle lines up and then you line up this block too. I actually really enjoy when there’s a lot of pieces to nest together because it keeps me, you know, it keeps my block looking really nice because I’m matching all the points. And then we’re going to do this over here. Do the same thing. And then I’m going to make this little piece match up and then my next one. And then this one right here. Make sure that seam is laying toward the middle. You know when you do these things a lot you’ll get into a habit of this. For this quilt you’re going to do this block 42 times and so you’re going to get really good at this by the end. So let us go ahead and press this now. And I like to press from the top to make sure there’s no folds or pleats. Folds and pleats are going to change the size of your block. Alright so isn’t this a pretty little block? It’s just a great little block. And once you make your block, like I said before, you’re just going to make 42 of these. Then we’re just going to put them together. So let me move my mat here so I can show you this.

So basically there’s a couple of things you want to look for when you put them together. You want to make sure, at least for this quilt that you’ve got your blocks oriented the right direction and to tell that these should be, you know if you get your blocks so you’ve got big sections of black or big sections of white then you’ve got one up right and one sideways. So you want to make sure that these come together this is going to form a four patch when these come together. Let me show you how that looks. So we’ve got this one here and this one here. Make sure that’s going the right direction. So see how that forms a little four patch. Here it is in the quilt right here. So let’s look at how I put these together because there’s no sashing or anything you’re just literally going to lay this block on top of each other and sew a quarter of an inch down the side. We’ve got six across here and seven down. We made the whole middle of the quilt, added our 2 ½ inch border. By the way I don’t say this very often but when you add borders you want to add your sides and then your top. And then you’re ready to add your sides again and your top. That’s just a general, general quilting rule. And it’s one of those things that we get used to doing but sometimes we forget to pass that on. It doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things, you know, so if you’ve made quilts all your life and done it differently it doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. It saves a little bit of fabric but it’s just a, it’s just one of those general rules so just keep that in mind.

Anyway this is a fun quilt. It’s quick and easy. Don’t be afraid to play with the layout. Don’t be afraid if you want a bigger quilt, add sashing. Don’t be afraid to see what happens if you turn them, you know, what secondary thing appears. This is my favorite part. People always ask me what’s your favorite quilt. It’s not the quilt that’s my favorite part, it’s the doing something like this and going, oh that’s my favorite part, that moment, you know that creative moment when you see something that wasn’t there before. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Disappearing Hourglass Crazy Eight quilt from the MSQC.