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.
The Dreamweaver XE
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”.
Changing the position of the laser pointer
Select the stitch
Now I select the stitch to use for sewing. On the stitch selection screen, press the “Quilting” stitches group key.
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.
Select “Piecing Stitch – right”
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!
Sewing the second line
All four corners of the snowball block are sewn with the Dreamweaver XE and now ready for trimming.
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.
Cut between the lines
I’ll press the seams of the snowball block towards the corner triangles. And here’s the finished snowball block.
The pressed block
I’ve kept sewing and managed to make a total of twelve snowball blocks with the Dreamweaver XE from Brother.
Snowball blocks
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
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.
This is part 3 of 5 in this series.
Go back to part 2: How to make a snowball block from a 5″ charm square
Go to part 4: 6 easy steps to correctly change the presser foot on the Dreamweaver XE
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