Sewing The Hour Glass Block Together

I left off last month making the first block of the What’s Good For the Gal is Good For the Guy challenge quilt. Today, I’m going to be sewing the hour glass block together, which is the second of the three blocks I’ll be using in this quilt challenge.

My inspiration for this block came from my kitchen. Not the egg timer, but rather the coffee pucks for the coffee machine. They were stacked on top of each other and, I thought, oh, that’s kind of cool and would make an interesting block design. In order to get the right angle, the square would have to be cut at more than a 45 degree angle making it easier to piece if I used a template to cut the pieces.

Making the template

After drawing the block on paper, I cut out the shape and pasted it to a piece of heavy box board. Then, I cut around the paper through the box board to make the template. Remember last month when I was making templates for the Snowball Block? I recommended not using cardboard for this as it tends to shrink the more times it’s used because it’s soft and collapses on itself.

The snowball block last month was based on a 5-inch square as is this hour glass block. This makes it much easier to do the math and creates even rows within the quilt, if everything is kept within the same measurements.

Cutting the pieces

To cut the pieces, place the template on the square with the straight edges of the template lined up at the edge of the square. Cut along the diagonal side of the template to create two pieces.

I’m using different fabric to test the cut before starting on the quilt fabric, which is in limited supply. It’s always good to use some scraps for testing to make sure everything is right before starting with the actual quilt fabric.

Unfortunately, there’s some waste with this block design, but the off cut can be used elsewhere — I’m hoping — or for another project. The piece being used is to the left and the off cut is the piece to the right.

In order to make a complete block, a mirror image of the piece needs to be cut. To do this, cut one piece with the fabric right side up and one with the fabric wrong side up. This goes for both the Eclectic Elements feature fabric and the background blue fabrics.

Sewing a test piece

Sewing the pieces together means sewing on the bias because the edges are cut on a diagonal through the square. With the IDT system engaged on the Pfaff Creative 4.5 machine, there should be no issue with stretching or distortion of the fabric. The IDT system ensures an even, smooth feed of the fabric under the foot and over the feed dogs.

Picking the foot

My choice of foot for this sewing job is the quarter-inch foot with the guide. It keeps all the pieces aligned perfectly because they’re butted up against the guide and cannot wander.

Start, stop & speed control

If you don’t want to use the foot control while sewing, it’s easy to use the start and stop button. Simply press the button to start sewing and press it again to stop sewing. The button is found on the front of the machine beside the up and down buttons for the presser foot.

I press the start button to sew and it takes off like a rocket and the seam is sewn in no time. I didn’t even have time to hold onto the fabric before I was pressing the button again to stop! I guess I didn’t check to see what the speed was set at. When I’m sewing without the foot control, I prefer to go at a slower speed because I feel I’ve more control over what I’m doing.

The speed control is found on the home screen of the LCD screen. In the picture below, I’m pointing to the speed control icon with the stylet.

Sewing the block together

I’ve been sewing the pieces together to create the 5-inch blocks for the hour glass block. Chain sewing has definitely made the process much faster. When finished, I used the thread cutter on the side of the machine to disengage the pieces from the thread and machine.

The thread cutter is found at the side of the machine. It’s a little round piece with a groove along the top to slide the thread into where it gets cut.

I’ve arranged the 5-inch squares into piles to make it easy for sewing them into pairs.

I match a light and a darker piece together in order to get some contrast within the block.

Finally, the pairs are sewn together to make a 9½ inch block.

With the second block sewn together, we can move on to the third block of the What’s Good For the Gal is Good For the Guy quilt challenge tomorrow. Even with bias seams, sewing the hour glass block together is easy when using the Pfaff Creative 4.5 with it’s built-in dual feed system.

Happy Quilting