Hi everybody it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I’m delighted to be here today. The block that we’re doing today is a dandy. And it’s actually called the Dandy. It’s an old block and I fell in love with it and so I wanted to show you how to do it. We are renaming it the Dandy Star. So let’s take a look at this quilt behind me. Isn’t this fun? This, first of all I love this fabric. It makes a darling baby quilt. This is perfect baby size. And we have three rows of three. So nine blocks is all it takes to make this quilt and you have this darling baby quilt.

So what you’re going to need to make this baby quilt is you’re going to need three packs of five inch squares. And we have used To the Moon and Back by Jennifer Pugh for Wilmington Prints. It’s an adorable line. And then we’re going to need a yard and ¾  of our background fabric. And that’s this pop fabric that makes the star legs. And you want to make sure that you pick a fabric with some contrast. I, we actually started to make this quilt with white fabric as our stars and we just lost the stars so make sure you check that out because when we added the blue fabric on there the whole thing just popped. So we love that blue. So you’re going to need a yard and ¾ of that.

So with your background fabric, what you’re going to do, this will give you a head start on the whole quilt. Is you’re going to take your background fabric and you’re going to cut two different sizes. First you’re going to cut five strips that are five inches wide and then sub-cut those into, into five inch squares. So line your fabric. I like to keep it folded, you know you can see mine’s folded because it’s less cutting space, less chance I’m going to make a mistake. I’m going to clean up this edge right here. And then I’m going to come over five and cut a strip. And when we talk about sub-cutting this is our initial cut and then we’re going to sub-cut this into five inch squares. So we’re just going to come along here. Again line up your fabric and we’re going to cut off our selvedge and then come over five and come over five. And so that is sub-cutting. And then you get this stack of five inch squares and you just get all of those out of the way first. So five rows five inches wide. Next cut you’re going to make is a 2 ½ inch strip just like this. Just like that. And you’re going to cut ten of those. And you’re going to sub-cut all of those into 2 ½ inch blocks. So we’re going to go ahead and do that. And just go along your whole row like this cutting 2 ½, 2 ½, 2 ½ until you get all ten of yours cut up and you have this nice big pile of 2 ½ inch squares.

Now we’re ready to start assembling our blocks. So what you want to do is you want to go into your charm pack and you want to choose nine of your favorite ones because those are the ones that are in the middles of our blocks. Right where’s our middle, here we go with an elephant right here. So those are the ones that are in the middle. You just pull those out and set them aside because then we have to make two other types of blocks. We’re the half square triangles for the corners and we’re going to make this center block that makes the star legs where it’s just snowballed on the top. So let’s start with our half square triangle. You’re going to take one of your five inch squares and you’re going to press one diagonal line like that or you can draw the line if you want. We’re going to lay this onto our five inch printed piece. Put right sides together and sew in the valley on that line. Now because, because, when you do this it actually keeps your five inch square five inches. But this is a lot of waste so I’m going to come back around and sew a half an inch right over here and then cut in between those and save that other little half square triangle for another project.

So we’re going to just come over here to the sewing machine and put, sew right on our line. Just straight across right on the line. And then I’m just going to whip it around like this and come over about ½ inch. I’m not even going to measure and I’m just going to come right along the edge and sew a line down there. And then I can cut that off. And I already have a half square triangle done for another project. So I’m going to cut this here and I’m going to set this just aside. And then this one right here we’re going to go ahead and press open. And I’m going to do it with my dark side to the top. And you’re going to need four of these for each block. Alright.

The next block we’re going to make is this snowball block like this. And we’re basically going to take one of our pieces and put a 2 ½ inch square. Again I’m just going to make a sew line right there. And you’re going to put this 2 ½ inch square on the top of both corners. So just like this.   And we’re going to sew this one here and then this one here. Just like that. And then we’ll trim those off so we’re sewing again right on the line. And I’m just going to move this one for a minute. They don’t actually overlap so you can, you can put that on right after you sew the other one. Alright, right on the line. There we go. Now we’re going to trim this off. And you’re going to need four of these for your block as well. So there we go. Now we’re going to press these back, set our seam and just roll them back. Alright. So now you’re going to need four of these as well.

So then you’re going to take your center block and we’re going to lay these out. And I’m going to show you how this goes. I have some put together here. Some of my rows already sewn together. So I’ve taken my two half square triangles and put them to one snowball block. My snowball block is the top. My half square triangles are pointing out to the bottom. And you do two rows just alike like that because they’re going to sandwich on either side of your middle row like that. So you’re going to sew three rows of three. You’re going to lay them out just like this. And then these rows will get sewn together to make, to finish up your block. So let’s go ahead and do that. This is just like a fun interesting nine patch because we’ve used several different blocks it, it has a lot of interest to it. I guess you could say it’s a dandy block. I love that name. I actually did a little research on it and why it was called the dandy and, you know because it’s a traditional old block. And I discovered that somebody just made the block and said, wow that’s a dandy. So I thought that was kind of fun. Alright now we’re sewing on the other side, making sure that our snowball block legs point toward the center solid block in the middle. And sew straight across. Alrighty.

Now we’re going to press this open. And this is a really fun, I like to press from the top. Make sure it’s nice and flat and all my seams are pressed open. And then you can flip it over and make your seams go the way you want them to. I’m not usually too particular about that. And your block is finished like this. Now you’re going to make nine of these. And then we’re ready to set them out in our quilt. And we’re just going to sew them together. So let me move this a little bit so I can show you how that happens. So we’re going to line them up like this. And we’re going to have three in a row so here’s our three. And then your next row, you’re just going to snug right up next to it and just sew them together. So what it’s going to make, this secondary block right here. It makes this awesome square in a square right here. And I mean it just gives it such pop and it just looks so cool. So you’re going to sew three rows of three together, nine blocks total.

Then we’re ready for our border. Now you might have noticed that we cut a whole bunch of these little 2 ½ inch squares. A bunch of these extra ones. And we didn’t use them on our blocks. But that’s because we have used them in our border. So we’ve taken that same snowball block and we have just sewn them together just like this to make this awesome little border that goes all the way around them. So your third pack of five inch squares is all border squares. So you can see how they go together like here and we’ve just sewn one after the other all the way down, all the way around it to make the border. Now I had a thought and sometimes I can’t help but share these with you. But if you turned that border around like this it would almost have a little scallopy look to it. So don’t be afraid to try these and play with some different layouts.
But here we have these. Remember these that we trimmed off. We have 36 of these right here. And we just went ahead and made a secondary little project. If you’re making a baby quilt sometimes you need another little project to put together. So this is just those pieces we cut off. We just lined them up in rows of six by six because there’s 36 corners and made this darling little project. Little tiny border. Look at this backing. Isn’t this just adorable. So cute on this quilt. And so when you get these nine blocks together you’re going to have a quilt that is 50 by 50. And that’s a really good size for a baby quilt. This would be great for a car seat cover or stroller cover or something like that. And, and for the backing you’re going to need three yards of backing. And it’s fun for a baby quilt to put on, you know we used the little stars on this one. We used the cute animals on the other one. But it’s fun especially when you’re doing a baby quilt to add that backing because, you know baby is going to lay on both sides of that quilt and you’re going to see both sides. And so it’s just fun to include a backing on that. So this was such a fun quilt to make. Really it’s a Dandy. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Dandy Star and our little bonus project from the MSQC.