Creating an oversized shoofly quilt block!

Yesterday I selected the colors for the Sewing Happens Here quilted wallhanging. Today I’ll begin with creating an oversized shoofly block.

Taking a traditional quilt block and supersizing it’s a lot of fun to do and an easy way to get a large space created without a lot of effort. The shoofly block is one of my favorites but you can experiment with other simple blocks too.

Using your selected fabrics, cut the following:

Background

• 4 – 9½” squares
• 2 – 10” squares

Shoofly

• 1 – 9½” square
• 2 – 10” squares

And remember before starting any new sewing project, I use Gütermann cotton thread for my piecing work and don’t forget to replace your sewing machine needle with a SCHMETZ needle! A good quality needle and thread are essential to creating, you can’t run a car without gas right?

Using 2 – 10″ squares of your light background fabric and 2 – 10″ squares of your dark background:

• On the wrong side of the light squares, with a pencil, lightly draw a diagonal line from corner to corner and again ¼” on both sides of the line
• Place one light square and one dark square right sides together

• With the light square on top, sew a scant ¼” on the outside pencil lines

• Cut on the pencil line, there will be 4 HST units

• Open each HST and press to the darker color
• Trim to 9½” square

• Assemble quilt background using image below as guide

The quilt block should measure 27½” square.

Tomorrow I’ll be preparing the appliques for adding to the oversized shoofly block. Join me!