Hourglass Four Patch Tutorial

 Welcome to Treadlestitches!  Here's a quick tutorial for a very easy quilt.

The blocks are made of two hourglass blocks and two plain squares.

To make the hourglass blocks, choose one dark charm square (5 in. x 5 in.) and one light square, same size.

Place the charm squares right sides together.  In this example, I put the light square on top.  Now slice the squares diagonally twice, corner to corner.  When pulled apart they look like this.

Each section is two triangles, right sides together.  Take them to the sewing machine, and stitch from the right angle to the triangle tip.  Make sure to sew all of them exactly the same way, with the light side up.  Here they are, all sewn.

Now open them up.  Gently finger press or iron the seam toward the dark triangle.  Arrange them like the photo below, and pin the center seam.  Then stitch.

 

From two charm squares, you get two identical hourglass units.  These units measure 4 1/4 inches square unfinished.  The edges on the outside of the units are on the straight of grain, which makes them less likely to stretch.
 

 

To make the four patch blocks, I cut two squares 4 1/4 in. from another fabric in the same color family, and sewed them to the hourglass units.  The resulting blocks finished at 7.5 in.

I realize this is an odd measurement.  The hourglass units could be trimmed down to 4 in. easily, which might make them easier to use with other shapes.  If you do that, the hourglass units would be 3.5 in. finished, and the four patch blocks would finish at 7 in. square.

I have never seen this method before, but it's possible somebody else came up with it first.  If you know who that might be, please tell me in the comments, and I'll give them credit.

And of course, if you make a quilt from this tutorial, I would love to see it!

Happy Quilting!

Sylvia@Treadlestitches