BOM: FINAL BLOCK!!! Candycanes for the Kids!

Can you believe we are on our final block? Wow, a year seems to have passed within a blink of an eye.

If you read the last post, you now should have all the half square triangles (HST) and then some that you need for this block. This block is REALLY easy to piece and a nice one to finish on.

I mean, if there was any type of "sewing torture" that would be it. Sewing on the bias is horrible. They rarely come in right, you have to do lots of trimming and, at least for me, they always end up wonky.

Which is not my intent.

We are going to start with our pile of freshly pressed HST's. and go from there. This block is really quick after we have those. We simply need to cut about three more pieces. A large rectangle and two small squares.













When we put them together they start to look like our candy cane!


Cool.












Take three of your HST and add one of your rectangles as shown. Sew the three HST together to form one piece and sew this to the rectangle set with the shortside to the top to run parallel to the now pieced three HST. This creates the bottom unit of our candy cane.

For the top, we do have to snowball one corner. Taking one HST situate it so that the "stripe" portion is facing in the lower left hand side. Mark one background piece on the diagnal and place it on your pieced HST.










Sew directly on the marked line. Cut off the area above the diagonal line and press.

Creating this:

Now position that with two more HST to form the stripes and the top row. Then add two more HST with a background square in the middle and your top portion of the candy cane is all set!












I do love how fast this block comes together!






Add your finished top portion to your finished bottom portion.











Ta da! Your block is finished.

Make four more and you have all you need for the quilt top.

In my next post we can start putting the top together and see how a year of work has turned out...

Now, on a completely unrelated note...

How cool is this? I pulled out this Aunt Lydia's sewing thread. This had to be from my husband's aunt's collection I inherited. I went to use it but it was really too thick to go thorough my machine. Too bad though because it matched really well..

Fun stuff you find when you inherit other women's sewing items. I think it's nice to use them. It honors the person that originally had the sewing kit as her items aren't just being tossed in the trash but goes forward to make something useful or beautiful or both.