August 16, 2013

Sea Glass and July Sugar Block Club

Rocky beaches are probably my favourite type of beach. My Grampy taught me early on about the joys of hunting for pretty rocks and shells. Then I'd make Dad let me bring them home when we left my grandparents'. Mom and Dad's driveway still has beach rocks strewn among the gravel. And Mom still makes Dad bring home more.

We went to a rocky beach today. This particular beach usually yields only a couple pieces of sea glass per visit, but today the place was full of it!

This is what I collected. All three boys also picked up a few pieces to add to their own collections.

Last night I started stitching my July block for the Sugar Block Club and finished it up this morning. I'm happy to report I managed to have all the pieces turned the right way with this one!



The middle is an on-point Ohio star. The corners are paper pieced and super quick. Only two seams!





 I used Bonnie Hunter's Triangle Buddy method to make bonus HST units when making the flying geese units for the Ohio Star. It's pretty simple.




First, draw a sewing line from corner to corner. This is the line for the flying geese unit.






To cut your template (or triangle buddy) , figure out the finished size for your HST, cut a square that size and cut it in half diagonally. As you can see, I used a very fancy recycled index card for my template.




Draw a line at the edge of your template. This is the line for your bonus HST unit. These two lines may not be 1/2" apart, so your seam allowances may be less than the standard 1/4", but not by much.


Sew on both lines.












Cut between the lines, centering the cut as well as you can.




 Et Voila!









 
Four beautiful flying geese units and eight bonus HST units! Now, I admit there isn't much you can do with 8 HST pieces, but if I sewed as much as Bonnie Hunter does I could probably make enough for a whole quilt pretty quickly. Instead, I'm just going to set them aside and wait until my next opportunity to add another set.

When I finished the block I couldn't resist laying out all eight blocks together. I love how they look together. It's hard to believe there are only four more blocks to go!

 I'm linking up with Kristy's Paper Piecing Party and TGIFF.

5 comments:

  1. Great block! They are all looking great together!

    Perfect idea to make additional HSTs when making the flying geese - save waste!

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  2. ohhhh, I like!

    I once had a friend that loved sea glass too. She would bring it home and run it through the "polish phase" in a rock tumbler. She separated them by colors and kept them in big glass jars with these ultra cool lids. I always like looking at them :)

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  3. Awesome trick with the mini hst square! I will be using that in the future! Thanks for linking up to TGIFF!!!

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  4. Great haul of sea glass and lovely block too.

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  5. Beautiful blocks! I love collecting sea glass too. When I lived in Florida, there was more variety in color (not sure why). I loved the blues and the roses the best.

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