Swallows in the Window - Vintage Quilt Block #7

hi everybody it's susan from sunrise quilt studio and today i have another vintage quilt block for you this one is called swallows in the window and this is a large block let me back up so you can see that one it's 16 inches square and traditionally this one is made with diamond shapes and those would be here in the corners these would all be diamonds but um when i was looking at the original pattern i realized that this could be easily made with half square triangles so in flying geese units so that's how i drafted this pattern and i wanted to show you how to make this one okay so here are all the pieces that i have down here and i chose four different colors plus the background and this one is a laurie holt flea market fabric this one is a riley blake solid and these two the blue and the pink came from my stash and i don't remember the designer of those and then this is a kona solid white for the background so um the a square which is going to be the center piece is eight and a half inches square and then this is what is going to surround it as this green b piece and i cut this out six and five eighths inch square and then cut it in half on the diagonal so you have to start out with two six and five eighths inch squares and cut them on the diagonal now for c you need four three inch squares and you take two of those and you cut them on the diagonal and then piece d is the same color but these are two and a half inches squared and you need eight of those piece e is blue and you start out with four three inch squares and then you take two of those you cut those on the diagonal piece f is eight two and a half inch squares piece g is for the flying geese you'll need eight pieces that are two and a half by four and a half h are four two and a half inch squares i is for three inch squares and you cut those on the diagonal ones so that you have eight triangles so we're going to get started by doing the center unit and so we're going to do the square and the square unit with the a and the b pieces okay so we're going to take the a piece which is an eight and a half inch square and then we're going to sew these triangles on to all four sides and to do that i want to find the center of each triangle and of the square so i'm just going to fold those in half and finger press and i'm just going to be careful because this is a bias edge so it will stretch out of shape pretty easily so i'm going to sew on two opposite triangles first so i'm going to find the centers of each of these now you can press this with an iron you can finger press it like i'm doing you could also mark it with a pen whatever works best for you and i'm going to try doing the finger press method first and i'm just going to line up each of the press marks like that and then i'm going to go ahead and pin so i'm going to get my pin cushion and then pin these i'm going to pin at both ends as well as the center okay so let me get this one pinned in place and then we'll sew these and then press and then sew these two corners and then sew the tr and then sew the triangles onto these two sides is what i'm trying to say i have my quarter inch foot on and i have a switch thread i ran out of my cone thread what i usually use is so fine color 402 i ran out so i switched over to rfo i had a spool of fill that i bought several years ago and i bought it for the long arm and never used it but this is color 20 21 it's also it's a 50 weight thread and i believe it's 100 cotton yes it's 100 cotton thread so i'm going to use that and i'm just being careful because of the bias of this green piece i'm going to drop my stitch length down to 2.0 [Music] so okay and swing this around okay so i'm going to press i'll press these seams open and then we'll sew on the other two okay now i'm going to go ahead and press these open and then we'll have the square and square done okay so here is the square and a square unit and there is more than a quarter inch between the point and the seam here and i did that on purpose so that it can be accurate and the next corner pieces the next pieces that go on can be will fit better so i'm going to line up the 45 degree line with the center square and move it out to the quarter inch mark at the point right here so this isn't um going to be that much larger but it may be a little bit so i want to check that so this is good this side is a little bit large so let me scoot this over and this will just square everything up for me sure i've got it cut all the way through before i go before i move it okay and then i'm gonna go ahead and turn and do this side and do the same thing line up with the 45 degree mark and the corner at the quarter inch mark now i've got sandpaper dots on here to keep the ruler from sliding in it's they're doing its job you can also just line it up with your trimmed edge too so i don't have much to trim off of this side either just a little slower there and there so there we go now everything is all squared up and i'm going to just set this aside and we're going to work on flying these units okay so to make the flying geese units we need the g rectangles which are here and we need the d and the f squares all of these flying geese are going to be the same okay if we look at the sample block all of the flying geese are the same they're just kind of rotated around the block so with the point toward me the blue will be on the left and the pink will be on the right so we're going to go this way and we're going to draw diagonal lines on the back of each one of these so we're going to go from corner to corner okay so for all of these d squares and i'm just going to use a mechanical pencil you can use whatever marking tool you'd like i know a lot of people like the friction pins some like water soluble markers some like air soluble markers so just use whatever you like to do so this pink i'm going to sew this direction so that it comes to a point like this so the pink will fold up here like this the f squares will do just the opposite i'm going to sew those from here to here and they will go like this so we will have this look like that so that's what we're after so i'm going to draw my diagonal lines on all of these and then start sewing these flying geese units [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so all of the flying geese units are done now and now i need to work on the half square triangles and that will be the c and the e squares so that's the c squares here are the e squares and then on the back side of one of these i need to draw a diagonal line so i'm just going to use the blue and draw a diagonal line on each one of those let me do this one i can't see this one very well so i'm going to do it again that's better okay so i need to make half square triangles so i'm going to match them up with the pink right sides together i'm going to sew a quarter inch away from both sides of that drawn line and then i will cut it on that drawn line so we'll go back to the sewing machine and do a little bit more sewing and you can pin these together if you want i'm just going to let them go without pins right now okay i'll do the second pair okay cut them apart and then i'm going to cut right on that drawn line and of course you can use your rotary cutter and ruler if you want to okay now i need to press open so i'm going to lay these with the blue side up and just press towards the blue okay so now i have dog ears so i'm going to clip those off so that they won't create any more bulk because there's going to be a lot of points coming together in this area and i need to get rid of as much bulk as i can so the next thing i need to do is i need to trim this down to a two and a half inch square so i'm going to line up the diagonal line on my ruler with the seam line here and go down to the two and a half inch mark and make sure everything is all squared up and then just trim and there's just going to be a little bit extra here [Music] so there we go and now i need to take the triangles and we're going to place them like here and here so right on the half square triangle so i need to make four of these so i'm going to stack all of my blue triangles together and all of my pink triangles together and all my half square triangles together so everything is in the right order and then i will start sewing and i'll just do one side at a time press and then sew the other side so i am going to do the blue triangle onto the pink we'll just sew that on and i am starting with the area that forms the right angle and running that under the machine first and what this this is also doing it's helping hold down the seam here that's pressed towards the blue okay so now i have them all chain pieced together and this is what i have at this point so i'm going to go ahead and press all of these open and then we'll add the pink to this side so first thing i'm going to do is cut these apart and then i'll press i'll just press as it was sewn and then press open so okay so those are all lined up and now i'm going to add the pink to the blue side so all of these edges out here are bias so i'm sewing a straight grain to a straight grain but this is going to be biased so i just need to be careful not to stretch that out but now i've got them all in order so i'm just going to start by sewing this triangle on and you can pin these if you want and you notice there are dog ears you can cut them now or you can cut them after you get the pink triangle sewn on whichever way you want to do it and grab hold of my threads so okay so these are ready to be pressed so we'll just press them as they're sewn and then press out so there we have the triangle unit so we'll lay that to the side and just press the other three okay so these are done in our flying geese so let's lay these out and i'll show you what we need to do next so here are the triangle units we just finished the flying geese are going to go here so i'm going to stack four on each side and then in here is going to go the h square and then the l triangles are going to go over here so i'm going to put four on this side and four on this side so we're just making a larger triangle okay so here we have it's just a larger triangle so h squares need to go on to one of these segments and then the triangles need to go on to each other side of the flying geese i'm going to sew the h squares to these four flying gish units and then i will add these triangles to this side of the flying geese units then i will come over here and do these here just trying these triangles with this flying geese unit so then i will have three sections and then we will sew these together and then we'll sew this onto there so first thing i got to do is sew squares onto these flying geese so i'll just the camera and we'll go ahead and start that so i'm just going to chain piece all of these together so so okay i'm going to go ahead and cut these apart so this is what we have and what i need to do now is to sew these triangles on to the blue side of the flying geese unit so i'm going to go ahead and do that before i press and i'm going to double check and make sure i'm getting this right yeah it's going to go this way so just watch your placement just watch that diagram and make sure sewing that triangle on the right direction so this is what you'll have if you look at it this way or this way failure to press these seams out so this is what we have at this point these edges will go all in a line like this so i have dog ears here i need to trim off so i'm just going to go ahead and do that now so now i need to sew these triangles to these flying geese so they're going to go this way okay so now we can press these out so just press it flat and press it out and once again i'm going to trim off dog ears okay so let's lay things out again and double check you can see how the diagonal is going along so where you need to sew these two sections together so i'm going to pull these apart so we need to sew these two sections together so i'm going to go ahead and fold this over and there aren't any seems to match but we do have a point that needs to match up to that seam so i'm just going to pull that back and like here and see if that point is going to line up with the seam here and just do my best to keep it there i'm not going to do any marking or anything i'm just going to go ahead and pin this and then i'll go ahead and sew this seam and then i'm going to do my best not to blunt off the tip of that flying geese unit looks like i need to put my pincushion back on so let me show you what this first one looks like and then i'll finish sewing the other three so we have this now we're gonna we're gonna after we get it all sewn together we'll do some trimming if we need to so right now this is what we have so i'm going to go ahead and do the other three pieces okay so now i'm ready to attach these two sections together so get them all sewn together and then we can move on to adding them onto the main block first thing i got to do is i do have some seams to match so i'm just going to nest those seams together and pin them and right here i'm not really matching seams but this point is going to meet at this seam so i'm just taking a peek there to see if that is kind of an alignment and i'm going to go ahead and pin and i'm not going to worry about how much is hanging over this side you don't need to worry about that right now so i'm going to go ahead line everything up and sew these now now i do have a point here but um i can see by the way it's lined up that um i shouldn't be shouldn't cut that off it should be okay so so okay let's see what we've got okay and i'm happy with the way that looks the point is lined up it's not cut off and the seam is lined up here so i'm good with that so three more to go so once again just gonna press as it's sewn and then i'm gonna press away from the smaller piece so i'm gonna press towards the center okay so this is one of the corners so the pieces now are done and i want to do some more trimming so that everything is the size that it needs to be and i'm going to judge from where these points are here here and here and line up go through the center here and then find the quarter inch mark it's just little bitty bits of this okay so here is the square and a square part of the block and we need to sew these on to the sides just like that so i'm going to match this point with this one here so i'm going to take my straight pin and go right through the top of the point there and then into the point here line everything up make sure my pin is straight and then just repin it like that now this is all a stretchy edge because it's all on the bias so i'm gonna just be careful with that and everything lined up here we go and then i'm going to sew with i'm going to sew with this side up because i can see all three of my points here so oh [Music] okay so i've got these two sides sewn on so there we go and i'm going to press and then sew the two opposite sides okay with this block and all of the seams that it has i'm going to press this open now you could press it to one side if you want i'm going to start by i'm going to try and press it open or press it to one side and this seems to be working okay now these seams are already pressed open because they weren't wanting to go to one side so like this one is fighting it a little bit too [Music] [Music] okay now i'm going to trim all the dog ears off and here we go it's too big to fit in the frame so i'm going to put this up on the design wall and then we can take a closer look at it okay there's the finished block i think it turned out pretty well this one does take a little bit more time because of the number of pieces in it there's quite a bit of work in the lower corners or in the outer corners i should say and it just takes a little time but you're looking at flying geese units and half square triangles and then you've got other triangles that you need to add in there so this block isn't perfect i can see a couple places where um there's a few little glitches in it but overall i think it it turned out pretty well the sample block that i did i had to redo the outer triangles on it because i used different measurements and it did not work out quite right so i wound up redoing all of those and that made it fit together better so anyway this is swallows in the window and this is an evelyn foland block so this is from the early 1930s i believe well that's it for the swallows in the window block and i hope you enjoyed this one it was different and it does take a little bit more time but i think it's a pretty block and i think you could use it with any fabrics that you want you don't have to use just 1930s reproduction fabrics on this block so i hope you enjoyed it and if you did please give the video a like and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already and click the notification bell so you'll be notified when the next video comes up and in the meantime i hope you're all staying safe and healthy and i'll see you in the next video thanks for watching for more quilting ideas click on the video links and to keep up with my latest projects click on the subscribe button i hope to see you again soon [Music] you

Channel: Sunrise Quilt Studio

Views: 1,240

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: quilts, quiltblocks, 1930quiltblocks, vintagequiltblocks, piecedquiltblocks, reproductionfabric, 1930reproductionfabrics, halfsquaretriangles, machinequilting, longarmquilting, traditionalquilts, traditionalquiltblocks, quiltblock, quiltblocktutorial

Id: ipOdjQUAfbY

Length: 38min 21sec (2301 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021