Hi everybody, it’s Jenny from the MSQC. And I am here with a fun quilt for you today. It is another disappearing hourglass quilt. I’ve only done two of those. So this is the third in the series. And they are so versatile, there’s so many things you can do with them. And it’s really fun to see a two color quilt every now and then, isn’t it? Let’s take a look at this quilt. Isn’t this pretty? So this really is a disappearing hourglass, wait until you see. And we did it in black and white. And it’s just so striking. Now with any block where you use a background fabric and a colored fabric you want to make sure there is good contrast. Black and white is about the best you can get. So let me show you how to do this. To make this quilt, what we used was one layer cake of Bella Solids, Moda fabric, black and one of white. This makes a pretty good quilt. It’s 78 by 78. Nice big quilt. You’re going to need some fabric out here for your border. We used a yard and a half of the solid black. We had to get some yardage on that. And then the back is five yards. And it is also just solid. So let me show you how to do this because you might need a little reminder if you haven’t done a disappearing block in a while.

We’re going to take a block of black and a block of white, lay them right on top of each other like this and sew all the way around the outside. Now the most important thing in making this is that your seam allowance is the same on all four sides. So just watch when you sew and make sure it’s the same. Now I have a block here where I’ve already sewn my blocks together on the outside. I know I do. Here it is, alright. Here we go. So you can see right here, I’ve sewn a quarter of an inch on all four sides. People ask me a lot, do I stop and pivot, do I go right off. I have a really fast sewing machine so I just sew right off the edge because the go pedal is better than the brake pedal. Actually sewing machines don’t have brake pedals. Alright so now what we’re going to is we’re going to cut four half square triangles out of this which means we’re going to lay our ruler diagonally corner to corner, just like that on both sides. And I’m just putting my ruler just right on the corner of the fabric. It should criss cross through your stitch line but if it doesn’t , that’s really alright too. Alright now let’s go press these open. And we are going to press to, so that the seam allowance stays to the dark side. So we’re just going to, if, if you lay your dark fabric on top, set your seam and then lift that open you can just roll that back. And that seam will be hidden on the dark fabric. You want to make sure you do that anytime you use a background with a much darker top color because that will help hide all those little, it’s like shadowing, you know. You see this little seam poking through. And so it’s, you know, you don’t want to do that. Alright.

Now we’re going to put these together so two white squares come together in the middle and two black squares come together in the middle just like this. Alright? Now what we’re going to do is we’re just going to lay these on here and sew these together this way and this way. And we’ll go to the sewing machine and do that. So I like to make sure my little seam lines up right here. I’m going to lay it right here under the foot, make sure my other seam lines up. And just sew a quarter of an inch down that side. And I’m going to do it on this one as well. Oops, I better check, I better check. I don’t want to unsew. I’m worried this isn’t right. Alright, wait a minute here now. Let me open these up. Oh ya that’s right, whew! I’d rather check than pick so we have to make sure we check it. There we go. So sew a few stitches then line up, you know, nest your, nest your little seam down here. You’ll be able to feel if it’s laying flat with your fingers. And then we’re going to put this together. Now the hourglass is fun to put together because we don’t have any dog ears in the center. It’s just a, like sewing two seams together. So again we’re going to line up our corners. And start sewing. And then I stop to make sure that my two middle seams are nested. I push one seam one way and one seam the other, to the dark, again to the dark. There we go. And that’s going to give us a block that looks like this. Alright so let’s just press that open real quick like. Alright.

Now what you want to do next is you want to make sure that your block, you want to measure it. So my blocks generally end up measuring 12 ¾. Whatever yours ends up you want to divide that by three. And 12 ¾ divided by three is 4 ¼ and I know that because I have a calculator on my phone. And then I like to cut from the middle. So I cut from the edge I would cut in 4 ¼ but if you want to cut from the middle like I do you have to divide it in half again. And that measurement is 2 ⅛. Oh you know what I’m going to do I’m going to be really smart here and bring up my rotating mat. Because this rotating mat makes this so much easier. Alright, so again I’m going to come with my ruler. And I’m going to come 2 ⅛ from the center seam. And I’m going to cut that on all four sides. Alright. Now this is the scariest part. But remember if you cut it wrong, to use the block all you have to do is square it up to the smallest size and then you can have a pot holder or a bag or if you make the mistake three times you can have a table runner. So we’re good either way. But we’re going to try not to make a mistake. So we are going to cut it at 2 ⅛ on all four sides like this. That should give us nine blocks that are exactly the same size. Out here in Missouri they sell farmland, you can buy 40 acres M or L. And I didn’t know for a long time what M or L means and it means More or Less. I kind of like that rule with sewing. You’re going to cut these at 2 ⅛ more or less. You know. Alright. Anyway actually the more exact you are with quilting the easier it is to make your blocks line up. But anything can be squared up to fit.

So now what we’re going to do I want you to look at this because these are all going different directions. Now if you haven’t seen the disappearing hourglass 1 and 2 make sure you check those out because this one is just a little different. This is the block we’re going for right here. And it’s easy to get confused and turned around. So we want to lay this block down. And then we want to lay our, orient our block so it looks the same. So this black corner is going to be up in this black corner. Now you only move two of these blocks and they swap spots. So we’re moving these middle blocks right here. And we’re just going to swap these two with each other. So we’re going to swap this one over here and we’re going to turn it. See it was going this way, we’re going to turn it so it goes this way and this one this way. So it makes this little kind of pokey square envelopey looking thing. Alright so then over here we’re going to do the same. We’re going to swap this one with this one. And we’re going to turn them so our little triangle comes to the center over here by the black block and the little triangle comes over here. Do you see what just happened there? Now we have these two, they look like kind of like kissing doves. Two little doves that are just kissing there. And then we’re going to sew this together as a nine patch.

So you’ll sew, you’ll just lay these on here like this and sew them. One row, two rows, three rows, add them all together and it will make this block right here. So I have some of these blocks already made and I want to show you how to do it. Now this is one of those, these blocks are so fun because as you play with them and you play with different positions and moving them to different places you’re going to see new things appearing. I’ve only done three on this block and there’s a lot of things to do. So let me show you, let me show you what happens when these blocks come together. So again there’s also several ways to set this one block. So you may want to play with that and come up with a different setting as well. We tried a bunch of them. This is the one I think is really fun. And so what I’m doing with this is I’m going to put my black squares together like this. And this helps me keep it straight in my brain.. So we’re going to do this because I want this medallion, this center medallion to appear.

So let’s look at the quilt behind me. There is this, we’re looking at these center blocks right here. So there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, blocks across, seven blocks down. But we turned them so that the first time all the whites come together and then the blacks come together, then all the whites come together. And as you put your rows together you’ll do that. So you’ll have one row here. And let me see how this one starts. It starts with the black in the corner. So we’re going to turn ours so it starts with the black in the corner. And then we’re going to match these two white blocks like this. And then we’ll put this one here so the blacks come together. Now if you do that opposite a whole new something appears. And then we’re going to keep that design going down here on the second row. And we’ll turn that so the white comes together and then over here so the black comes together. So you get these two motifs. You get this square and you get this kind of blossomy looking thing. And it just makes a really fun quilt.

So sometimes it’s really hard when you make these blocks to cut them but get over that fear of cutting and just try this because it’s so fun. Really creative. It gets all those brain juices going that make us go, ahh this is why I love this because I can create this cool stuff. So we hope you enjoyed this tutorial on the Disappearing Hourglass 3 from the MSQC.