Winter Mystery Quilt along clue 3 is here!

Good Morning to everyone!  here is your clue 3 for the Winter Mystery Quilt Along!

Are you all ready?

Today you will be sewing hourglass blocks and I have a very cool way of doing them without dealing with triangles!  I am sure you are happy about this neat little trick.  

Cutting Instructions

So today you will need 18 backgrounds cut at 7 1/4" this will either be you light or your dark fabric

Then you will need of your 18 Medium fabrics cut at 7 1/4".  I am using two colours for my mediums and if you are doing this cut 10 of one colour and 8 of the other.

Preparation and Sewing Instructions 

Squares ready to be prepared for sewing

Mark each medium fabric with a pencil diagonally like this

You may use a pencil or you may use a hera marker like I did to form a crease in the fabric that you can see so you can use this as a guide.   Pair your mediums with a background fabric square with right sides facing.   Off to the machine we go and we will sew a 1/4" seam either side of this marked diagonal line.

You should now have 2 sewn lines like this

Place your ruler point to point diagonally on the opposite diagonal to you have sewn

Cut the fabric from point to point diagonally on the opposite of the sewn diagonal like in above diagram and below.  Then cut on the drawn or marked line inbetween your stitching.  

this is what you will now have.

Open up the pieces and you will now have four quarter square triangles ready to make into hourglass blocks.

cut units to make hour glass blocks

Press your seems to the dark side, in my case this was my medium fabrics.   Making sure you but the centre seems together to have a neat fitting block and then sew this seam to form your hourglass blocks.

Pink ones sewn Yellow to be sewn

Ta Da!  You are almost complete.  If you did not hear on the first clue I accidentally recalculated my calculations and halved the amount of four patches you need so you will need to make another 36 four patches before next weeks clue.  

unit blocks and totals for the quilt so far

72 four patch units

9 Uneven 9 patches

36 hourglass blocks

I really hope you are enjoying this quilt,  next week sees the final clue and the making up of the quilt. I have actually purchased a striped binding for mine and a Star background which you can see in last nights blog post here

Also remember Announcement of Mystery can be found here

                          clue 1 can be found here

                          clue 2 can be found here

You can join us on Facebook Wehago Designs Quilting Community or on Instagram with #wintermystery2016.  

Looking forward to seeing your quilt come together like mine is and all the different combinations of fabrics and colours.  It truly is amazing how we can make a quilt look different by our different choices of fabrics and colours and make them look so totally rockstarish!

So this is your EARLY Friday post to start your weekend off in a great way!

We are heading into a very cold patch of weather today so if you are in my part of the world rug up and stay safe and to everyone else take care and stay safe and we will meet back here again very soon.

signing off to go and get ready to quilt some more an another project.1

Wendy 

Clue 2! Winter Mystery Quilt Along! Come Join the Fun!

Happy Friday to everyone!

What a week I have certainly had and its been lots of fun and lots of planning of many many fun things to come. I hear you saying "Seriously you are saying just get down to business and let us all have the mystery clues".  I hope you are enjoying it, don't forget I want to see all of the photos of how you are going.



So without any further ado, here goes:-

Today you will need to bring out the little 2" squares we put away last week and to this we will add some background and our medium fabrics.  I am using two different colours so I will give you total to cut and then my breakdown incase you are using two colours also.

Cutting instructions:-
from last week the 36 dark 2" squares (18 blues and 18 greens)
36  pieces cut at 3.5" x 2" of medium fabrics (20 Pinks and 16 yellows)
*note I cut these in lots of four of the one colour, if you can this would be a good idea unless you are doing a completely scrappy quilt
9 x 3.5" squares of your background fabric

pieced all cut and ready to sew

Sewing instructions:-

From your medium strips you have cut separate into two halves keeping them in pairs.  

Take one pile to the sewing machine with the 2" squares. 

*if you are using 2 colours separate the colours and take to the machine with your medium strips.  I had 10 pink strips and 8 yellow strips. 

We are adding a square to each end of the strip.  If you are using two colours add them to opposite ends of the strips.

ready for sewing

The next stage take the 9 backgrounds with the remaining strips to the machine and sew the strips to either side of the background fabric making sure you use the same fabric on each square.

prepared ready for sewing

And this is what we achieve, 5 pink units and 4 yellow units and 18 strip units.

all pieces joined into units

Last stage for sewing this unit is, to join the strips together as follows.  

Remember if you are not using two colours for you darks it will not matter how you put the small strips to the centre of the block.  If you are using two colours make sure the colours are opposite each other as follows in photo below.

Ready to sew unit together

all units stacked in order for sewing

Clue 1 and 2 all complete 

Now we have completed clue two.  We now have 9 uneven 9 patches and 36 four patches.  Only two more clues left folks!  How are you enjoying this?  Are you loving my colours coming together or are you enjoying yours more.  Don't just visit leave your calling card!  Say hello, and let me know where you are visiting from, I love to chat!  

Don't forget to join me on instagram here  and don't forget to tag your blocks with #Wintermystery2016 or on Facebook  at Wehago Designs Quilting Community

So until the next post over the weekend to let you know how my sewing is going, have fun and keep on smiling and quilting!

Cheers!

Wendy