Hi everybody it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And gosh I’ve got a fun project for you today. I love it when you take a simple little thing and when you put them all together it makes something really cool. So this is our Diamond Squared. And isn’t this beautiful? This is the block we’re talking about right here. And it’s just sashed. We’ve put a double border on it so the whole thing is just kind of fun. So let me tell you what you need to make this. So to make this quilt what you’re going to need is one roll of 2 ½ inch strips. And we have used this darling line called Upper Case by Jeanine Vangool for Windham fabrics. And I, I don’t know why but I’m, I love things with words on them. So it’s fun to me that it has some in here that have words on it. We’re also going to need about 3 ½ yards of your background fabric. That’s the white that we’ve used in here. The background all gets cut into 2 ½ inch strips or squares so you can use a roll if you want to use a roll on that. It will take more than one roll. That’s why we went with yardage. So 3 ½ yards. Also this first border right here is one yard. The outer border is a yard and a half but that also includes all your little cornerstones as well. And look at the back. Of course we put the words on the back. It’s so pretty. It’s going to take seven yards to back this quilt. But it’s just so much fun. And the reason it’s going to take seven yards is because it makes a big quilt. This quilt is going to be 75 by 89 inches, about. You know depending on your seam allowance. So let me show you how to make this block.
This is the block we’re talking about right here. And it’s actually made up of four quadrants. So this is a quadrants right here. This is one fourth of the block. And it’s made up of all these little 6 ½ inch strips. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take several of our 2 ½ inch strips. And I like to kind of stack them. That way you cut more at one time. I’m going to mix them up here. Pull in an orange one. And I’m just going to go ahead and cut off my, my selvedge edge right here. Just like that. And then I’m going to cut 6 ½ inch pieces. So we’re going to count, one, two, three, four, five, six and a half right here. And you’re going to do that to your whole strip set. You should be able to get six cuts out of each strip set. One, two, three, four, five, six. There we go. And one more, so we’ve got, one, two, three, four, five, six and a half right here. Alright. So you just have that tiny little bit of waste. And that’s kind of fun. I love things that don’t have a ton of waste. So then you’re going to get all those pieces cut. And then you need some  2 ½ inch squares for your corners because we’re going to snowball each strip. So again you’re going to cut your background into 2 ½ inch strip, into 2 ½ inch strips and you’re going to go ahead and sub cut those into 2 ½ inch squares. You’re going to need 24 of those for each of our blocks.
So I’ve got some pieces here already cut. And what we’re going to do is we are going to attach a snowball block, this is my snowball block. A 2 ½ inch square to the end of each strip. Now these blocks you want them to be going the same direction. And you’ll see what I mean here in a minute. So what I’m doing right now is I’m finger pressing them. I’m folding them diagonally, pressing along the fold so that it gives me a sew line. That gives me a line to go on. And I have, you want these all to go the same direction. So once you start putting your little squares on the corners make sure they’re all the same. So mine are going to go this way and this way. So you can see here. See my lines. They run the same direction. Just like that. And when I finish with these it should look like all my other ones. They should look the same. Alright so we’re going to take these over to the sewing machine and sew these down.
And let me grab my chair here. Let me move these so you can see better. Because this is one of those little, little things that if this, if this goes crazy then the whole thing is going to be crazy. So we want to sew on the line. And then we’re going to clip our thread. And then we’re going to come back and sew this way. Alright. Now we’re going to trim these off. And actually I’m going to fold this back. Before I trim I’m going to fold it back to make sure that this one looks like the other ones I’ve sewn. And it does. Whew! We’re glad that worked. Alright now we’re going to trim off these little edges and then we’re going to press it. So for each little quadrant you’re going to need three of these. So do that to three. You know sew your little edges on three. And then what we’re going to do is we are going to sew these together in groups of threes, just like this. Just like that. Alright?
So now we’re going to put these together, put right sides together and sew two. And then we’re going to add our third one on. So we’re going to go ahead and sew a quarter of an inch right here. And then we’re going to add our third one on there and make sure he’s standing up here just right. The color right where we want it. And there’s no really, you’re not really lining anything up so there’s nothing to really line up on this. Alright so now I’m going to press this open. And I like to press from the top first. Make sure everything is nice and flat. Then I can flip it over and press my seams the way I want them to go. Alright.
So now what you’re going to do to put your block together is we’re going to put four of these together. And we are just going to turn them every time. So we’ve got this one. And see here they are straight. You just turn it and it lines up to make the diamond in the middle. So we’ve got diamonds on the ends and diamonds in the middle. And we’re going to make a square so we’re calling this Diamonds Squared. So we’re going to put this together like a big four patch. We’ll fold the two sides over, sew these two and then we’ll sew that seam in between. I’m heading over here. We’re going to sew a quarter of an inch. Now here’s a little tip for you, if you ever do this quadrant thing and it seems like one of the pieces might be a little bit bigger. If you put that piece on the bottom generally the feed dogs will take in that extra fabric. So that will make it fit a little better for you. I’m going to make sure this one is all lined up. Then we’re going to open these up. And we should be able to match our diamond to the center right here. There it is. Now we’re just going to fold those over and sew the long seam. This would make an awesome scrappy quilt. You know you have all those little pieces of, of 2 ½ inch strips. I tend to save those. I have like a bin of 2 ½ inch strips. And I’m always, always looking for fun little projects to go with my bin of strips. That’s one of those things that I’m always sharing with people. And it never seems to go down. I always have this huge old bin of strips that never seems to go down. I think the more we share the more, the more we get.
Alright, now we’re going to iron this open. See how we did. Because we’re not really matching anything up too much. You know it goes together really easy. It’s a really easy block. Alright. Here’s our block. Look at that. It came together very well. Now let me show you another little tip right here.  See where, when you have two threads that cross. Let me get a pen here so I can show you this little tip. So see how this thread right here comes across here. And this one comes across here like this. Anytime that you have two threads that criss cross each other, as long as this seam, as you stay on the seam side of that cross you won’t lose your little point in there. So anytime you have two threads that cross, that’s how you get it so you keep that point. And so the point doesn’t sheer off. Now on this one I just don’t think it’s going to matter that much. People aren’t going to be looking closely at it. But that’s a great tip for keeping your points.
Alright so when we’re ready to put this together you’re going to cut your sashing the length of your block. And I think I have some strips here that are cut. And you’re going to sash between your blocks. I put a sashing between every block. So let’s look at the quilt right here. So we have four blocks across here. And we have just a sashing in between each block. And it ends with a sashing and it begins with a sashing. So the whole long block is sashed. So as you’re, as you’re putting them out like this you’ll start with a sash. You’ll put a sash in between every single block and you’ll do that for your whole row. Your next row is going to be your, the, the sashing row that has your little cornerstones in it. And I have some pieces of that right here. So your sashing, these sashing strips is going to be the same size because it’s going, it’s going to fit right along the bottom of your block as well. And then you’ll have a little cornerstone that goes in between each one. So you’ll make one long strip like this that has cornerstone, sashing, cornerstone, sashing that fits all the way across. So let’s look at that here. So you’ll do cornerstone, sashing, cornerstone, sashing, cornerstone, sashing all the way across. You’re going to put one of those rows in between every row of blocks. And then even the top has a row and the bottom has a row. The sides will be finished automatically because they’ll go in as you put the rows in. Then you’re going to get to add your borders. This little four inch border. And this is a 5 ½  inch border on the outside. And it just makes a darling quilt. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on Diamonds Squared from the MSQC.