Back to the quilt I posted yesterday hanging on my new, beautiful quilt rack.
The quilt is made up of the traditional Birds in the Air blocks shown here:
The black units would be the birds, the white represents the air, and the red I would guess is the land (or water?). Traditionally pieced, one would have to handle many half square triangles in the construction of this block. A half square triangle is what you get when you take a square and cut it in half diagonally, actually you get two from one square. The diagonal side of the triangle is along the bias grain of the fabric which is very stretchy and easily distortable. Not the easiest to work with.
Here is the way I constructed this block, using all half square triangle units and squares:
I’ve taken the block and converted it into a 9-patch. There are many quick and easy time-saving methods for making multiple half square triangle units at a time without having to handle bias edges. I’ll share my favorite method at another time. In my opinion, this is a much more accurate, easy and fun way of sewing this traditional block.
Here is a link to a tutorial on my favorite method for constructing half square triangles.