Getting HSTs out of a snowball block in one simple step

Yesterday on QUILTsocial I used the guideline marker (aka laser pointer) on the Dreamweaver XE to sew the corners onto our snowball blocks. Today I’ll use this same feature to reduce the waste that usually comes with this method of making snowball blocks.

Moving the laser

The first thing I do is move the laser. The position of the laser pointer on the Dreamweaver XE can be adjusted by pressing the “-” and “+” buttons to the right of the guideline marker key. I’m moving it as far to the left as possible, pressing the “-” button until the reading says “-3.5”.

Select the stitch

Now I select the stitch to use for sewing. On the stitch selection screen, press the “Quilting” stitches group key.

Next, I select the Q-02 “Piecing Stitch – right” button. Once it has been pressed it will turn blue to indicate that it has been selected.

The stitching line is ½” away from the illuminated laser line. I’ll line up the Dreamweaver XE‘s laser along the diagonal sewn line so that our next stitching line will be ½” away from the diagonal. Usually I just use a pencil and ruler and draw a line ½” away from the diagonal but with this machine I can skip this step! That’s an amazing time saver!

All four corners of the snowball block are sewn with the Dreamweaver XE and now ready for trimming.

I use a rotary cutter to cut between the two sewn lines on all four corners of the snowball block. It doesn’t matter if this seam isn’t an exact ¼” wide, just don’t trim too close to either of the lines of stitching.

I’ll press the seams of the snowball block towards the corner triangles. And here’s the finished snowball block.

I’ve kept sewing and managed to make a total of twelve snowball blocks with the Dreamweaver XE from Brother.

Here’s my basket of half-square triangle units made from the ‘waste’ of the snowball blocks. Once I press them I can trim them a bit if they aren’t all the same size.

Half-square triangle units are very versatile when it comes to making quilt blocks!! Next month we’ll explore that in depth, but tomorrow I’ll set up the Dreamweaver XE for piecing nine patch blocks.