Today’s disappearing block is one of Paulette’s favorites. Follow along while she shows how to make this pretty star block using HSTs. Get the free pdf guide, then watch the video to see how easy it is!
Disappearing Nine Square HST Quilt Block Guide
Video transcript:
hi I’m Paulette Morrissey from Tulip Square and today I’m going to show you how to make another disappearing block this is one of my absolute favorites this starts out as four simple half square triangles and then it is cut up and put back together and you’ll get this very elaborate looking square that looks really pretty as a quilt it’s pretty as a placemat if you put some borders on it you make a nice runner and this is just in two colors you can also make it fancier in more than two colors but I kind of like the two color one you can find our free pdf in the description below that will show you the sizes that I use and the cutting and the number of pieces you need and those PDFs are always free so check it out in the description below and let’s head over the sewing machine and make a very pretty disappearing block
you’re going to start by making half square triangles four simple half square triangles and all you need for each one of your blocks is two squares of a light color and two squares of a dark color or two just very nicely contrasting colors and you’re going to pair them together so what I’m going to do is take each of these pairs and on the lighter side of the wrong side of the lighter half I’m going to draw a line a nice diagonal line nice and clear like that I’m going to do that on each one of them now what you’re going to do is you’re going to sew half an inch away from that line on each side gonna have two seams here one on each side of each line so I’m going to sew both of those and then we’ll proceed now I’ve got them sewn one seam on each side of the line and I’m going to cut along that line I drew this will give you two identical half square triangles from each one of these pieces that you sewed and you’re going to need a total of four to make one block sew two of these sets together and when you’re sewing make sure you keep your seam a nice accurate quarter inch seam so that all your pieces fit together nicely and then I’m going to go press them towards the darker color when you’re pressing these pieces make sure that you don’t pull them when you’re pressing them because you are pressing on the diagonal and you don’t want to distort you want a nice straight line across there now what you’re going to do is you’re going to put them like this in itself is a kind of a cute block a simple block I’m going to sew these together in pairs I’m going to put this one here sew down here and put this one here sew down here and then I will press toward a half that has the dark all right once you’ve got those pieces sewn and pressed I’m just going to put them together in the middle put them together right down the center seam here now once we’ve got that pressed together and I did press that seam open just to reduce a little bit of bulk in the center seam that is done and is this block at this point is 10 and 1/2 inches square so what you’re going to do is cut it into three and a half inch pieces we’re going to cut here three and a half inches from the edge here three and a half inches from the edge which will give you three and a half in the center and then you’re going to carefully rotate yourself or however you do this three and a half inch 3 1/2 in and a three and a half so you’ll have nine three and a half inch squares I’m going to go cut that apart and I’ll show you how that looks okay so here’s what we have our nine squares are cut apart and you can see we’ve got three in the top row three in the middle row and three in the bottom row so now what we’re going to do is you’re going to take this one and spin it around and take this one and spin it around and then I’m going to take this and spin it around this and spin it around this one taking all of those and spinning so the little triangles are now all facing outward where they were all towards your center and then these two also get spun around and then you just take this one and give it a quarter turn either way then you have this and now what you have to do is sew these together I’m going to take the first two from each row so I don’t mess it up I’m going to sew this seam here quarter inch this seam here quarter inch and this seam here a quarter inch and then I’m going to add the third square from each row to the opposite side right here I’m going to go ahead and make these three strips of squares okay now I’ve got three strips all sewn together and when I pressed them I pressed the two end seams away from the away from the center block and the middle one I pressed towards the center block so when I sew them together they will all nestle properly so now I’m just going to sew this piece here and this piece here and our block is finished isn’t that a pretty block so for this particular block we started out with five and a half inch squares that we made into the half square triangles and you end up with a square right now that when it’s sewn into something will be a 9 inch square it’s about 9 and 1/2 inches right now and that is another disappearing block for you now you know how to make the half square triangle disappearing block very pretty isn’t it it’s one of my favorites we hope you enjoyed this video if you did please hit the Subscribe button and the like button hit the little bell if you want to be notified and remember we put up a new video every Saturday morning usually around 10:00 and we alternate we put some some of our block videos up we put some of our pattern instruction videos something different every week so we hope you have a good week have some fun sewing all week and we’ll see you next time bye-bye