Blog Post 9 – Classic Churn Dash
Hello, everybody! Your regular Craft Dafty here (@thatcraftydafty) with my monthly update on the Patchwork and Quilting variant of the My Guilty Pleasure Subscription Service.
The Patchwork and Quilting option for the My Guilty Pleasure Subscription Service is designed to have you make a block each month, and by the end of the twelfth month you will have enough blocks to make a sampler quilt.
The seventh Block of the Month is the Classic Churn Dash.
As always, inside this month’s box I received the following:
x 4 Fat Eighths of a new Lewis & Irene collection
x 1 Fat Quarter of a background
Fully printed instructions for the Block of the Month, complete with helpful illustrations
x 1 spool of thread, in a coordinating colour
x 1 surprise!
The Classic Churn Dash block is one of my favourite traditional blocks, so I was very excited to get the chance to make it up for this month’s block.
A few elements and techniques in this one that we’re all familiar with by now, but possibly one of the newest is strip sets. If you’re unfamiliar, strips sets are when you sew two (or more) long rectangles of fabric together lengthwise and then trim block units from the newly formed bigger rectangle. In this pattern, we’re only sewing with two rectangles that are the same length and the same width. That means that this strip set in particular is a lot easier to sew, so I didn’t pin the strips together before sewing.
However, if you are sewing with strips that are longer than 20”, Jelly Roll strips for example, then it’s definitely worthwhile pinning these strip in a few places before sewing to ensure that they don’t get stretched or warped during sewing. I’d recommend pinning the start, the middle and the end of the strip, but of course you can pin as much as you like.
As you can see, the length of strips used in this pattern also allow for a bit of wiggle room when it comes to cutting your units. This can be a bit of relief for those of use who like to tighten and clean up our edges before we cut from strips. If you’re ever planning on making strip sets in the future, you can always make the length of the strip a bit longer to give yourself extra wiggle room, but we all want to save as much fabric as we can.
The next step in this pattern is to make your HSTs (Half Square Triangles). A slightly different method this time where we make 4-at-a-time instead of our usual 2-at-a-time. For this method, you pin your fabric squares together – right sides together – and you sew all around the perimeter. You can either sew right off the edge when you get to it, or you can pivot when you get to the corner and continue down the next side.
I personally prefer to sew off the edge, as pictured above, because this helps me in the next step which is cutting your HSTs. Once you’ve sewn round all four side you cut across both diagonals and you will end up with four beautiful HSTs. When I sew off the edge I end up with a little cross in the corner, so I just line my ruler up with both crosses on opposing corners and I cut right through them.
Another little tip: I always make sure my HSTs are bigger than I need them to be so I can trim them down. I think a lot of people do the same but a good way to do this is to add an extra quarter or half inch to the measurement for you starting square. For example, if you’re making 2-at-a-time HSTs are your end measurement is going to be 4½” squares, then I usually begin with a 5¼ “ square. This gives me roughly a half inch of wiggle room for trimming. In the case of this pattern, I added an extra quarter inch to my starting square of 7¼” square, taking me up to 7½” square.
You can see in the picture above how much extra this give you, so if you’re someone who struggles to keep their quarter inch accurate, this will help you make units that are the right size.
You’re finally ready to sew your block together.
It’s as simple as sewing a nine patch together and there are no special seams to match, just your intersections.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I like to press my seams to one side and this pattern means that I can do so with little to no bulk. It would also lend itself to pressing seams open, especially on the corner HST units, however both methods would work here.
That’s it, you’re done!
As always, I hope you’ve found this helpful. I’ll be providing updates every month via the Little Miss Sew ‘n’ Sew blogs on their website, but you can check out any little sewing updates via my Instagram account: @thatcraftydafty. Hope to see you there.
Happy sewing!
H.