Today I'm going to show you how to make the third block in my Vintage Block Along If you are just tuning in... the short explanation of this tutorial series is: 1.My grandma was a quilter and made many many quilts in her lifetime. 2. She gave me her basket of patterns that she used to make her quilts. I'm sure some of those patterns came from her mother (Martha) and sisters as well. 3. I am taking several of those vintage block patterns and drafting them so that they can be rotary cut and sewn by machine instead of using templates... which is how the patterns all were back then:) 4. I'm sharing blocks from her pattern basket via tutorials here for you on my blog. 5. I have been waiting for the release of my Farm Girl Vintage fabric to do this series because both of my grandma's were the original farm girls in my life:) 6. The blocks will finish at all different sizes.. and I will put them together into a quilt.. I'll show you how as well. 7. The tutorials will be about one a week. I've done three so far this week just to get a good start! 8. I'm not sure how long this will go or how many blocks I will be doing... but let me just say that there are a lot of good vintage blocks in grandma's basket! Grandma always made the best use of her time. Between all of the things that a farm wife did back then... she always managed to make time for quilting and stitching with her sisters, my mom, and me and my sisters too. She made so many beautiful things to make her home a comfortable and a welcome place to be. The photo above was a stamped on linen cross stitch and now hangs in my bedroom. This is my grandma's cute little farmhouse. I think she must be taking the picture... from left to right is Uncle Ron, my grandpa (Nat) Uncle Bruce, and then my mom and dad. Mom was the baby of the family. This must have been when my parents were engaged. Grandma and grandpa raised 5 children.. Aunt Doris and Uncle Lynn are not in this photo. An addition was added to the farmhouse a few years after this photo was taken. Now my cousin Matthew and his family live there:) Grandma loved to decorate and take good care of her home and make it a place of rest for grandpa when he came in from the farm. Grandma also loved to be with Grandpa when he was out with the sheep herd too:) Farm Life was full of hard work and they worked together and loved it:) Okay...time to make a block! Grab your fabric and let's get started:) If you are using Farm Girl Vintage fabric I would suggest a fat quarter bundle along with both fat 8th panels. I'll be using some of my Bee Backgrounds collection for the blocks too. I like to use scrappy backgrounds. I like the way that they add to the vintage look. So no worries about the background yardage amount for the quilt... just use what you have... a different one for each block or choose 6-8 and use them throughout. It's your choice! I decided on these three prints... you will need 3 colors and one background for this block. I chose to use my new aqua pin dot for the background. It was originally part of my Sew Cherry 2 fabric collection but is now a Riley Blake Designs Basic... YaY! This is the block that I chose out of my grandma's pattern basket for this week... And yes I had my crochet out on my work table and I just had to add some round granny's to the photo for fun! After all...crochet is vintage too:) My other grandma taught me to crochet. She loved it and she crocheted ALL the things for us back then:) From your background cut: 4 - 3 1/2" x 6 1/2" 8 - 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" 36 - 2" x 2" From Fabric One Cut: 4 - 6 1/2" x 6 1/2" From Fabric Two Cut: 4 - 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" From Fabric Four Cut: 9 - 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" Pair up these two squares to make 4 half square triangles. Mark a line or use the Seams Sew Easy Guide and sew from point to point with right sides together. CLICK HERE to view how I put it on my machine:) Trim off the excess and press. I use my trimmings and cut a 1 1/2" square from each at the same time. Four 1 1/2" squares to add to my scrappy square stash:) Set the 4 half square triangles aside and grab the nine 3 1/2" squares and the 2" background squares. We are going to make 9 square in a square blocks. Sew an easy corner triangle onto one corner of each square like this. Now sew one to the opposite corner. Trim away the excess. These trimmings are too small for me to keep:) I pressed my seams open. Now add the 2 remaining easy corner triangles. Trim and press. I used my 3 1/2" Trim-It Ruler to square up these square in a square segments if needed... And also the previous half square triangles. The lines on my Trim-It Rulers make it so easy to get things squared up! Okay... now it's time to start sewing your segments together. Sew them together like this. You should have 4 of each and have one square in a square leftover for the block center. I used my 6 1/2" Trim-It Ruler for these segments. Mark a line from corner to corner on your large squares. You will be sewing an easy corner triangle onto the bottom of these 4 segments. I always pin these when the squares are large so that they line up perfectly. By the way... I've had several questions about my cute little tractor pincushion. I made it a few years back with the publication of my Farm Girl Vintage Book I love to make pincushions out of small vintage things and when I saw this cute vintage toy tractor I just knew it would be a perfect pincushion for this vintage farm girl:)! Here's a quick tutorial for you... I simply used one of my circle rulers to cut a circle of fabric. Sorry that I can't remember which size because it's been too long! I just turned under and gathered the edges by hand and stuffed it firmly... then tied off and knotted it. Then I glued it right onto the tractor seat using a glue gun. Cute and easy peasy! Now back to my original tutorial! When you are trimming the excess from these segments... make sure that you have the half square triangle side up so that you can be sure to trim off the correct part! I pressed towards the half square triangle. And yes... I sure did cut these squares for my stash out of the trimmings:) Lay out your block like this. It's a simple 9 patch now and you can sew 3 rows of 3... And then sew those 3 rows together. This is the back of my block. AROUND THE CORNER 15" x 15" finished 15 1/2" x 15 1/2" unfinished This block has the perfect vintage flair and I'm really happy with how it turned out! I named it "Around the Corner" because we did a lot of easy corner triangles and also... my grandma just lived around the corner from our little farm:) Also 2 of my great Aunts and Uncles lived just around the block from us on opposite corners as well. My Aunt Isabelle and Uncle Elt on one ... Aunt Edith and Uncle Jim on the other. Isabelle and Edith were 2 of grandma's 5 sisters:) So here are the first 3 Vintage Block Along blocks together. Sew vintagey fun!! If you have missed these tutorials... here are the links. Just click on them to take you right to them. GRANDMA'S STAR PATTERN BASKET Thanks for tuning in to my Vintage Block Along! Chat with you next time:) xx Lori