When making a snowball block do you cut the seams at the corners or not? And Why?

I do, to remove bulk, otherwise the quilt would have heavier corners, if that makes sense.

I trim to the 1/4" seam allowance, but before I trim, I sew another seam 1/2" over toward the corner. Then trim down the center, and I end up with hst's.

I use them on the back, usually have enough to do a border around the quilt. I have also used them as the binding, sewing them all together to get one long strip, then folding it into the binding.

What are hst's?

HSTs are Half Square Triangles but I don't know what snowball blocks are! LOL

Tara

Half-square triangles, sorry here is a good tutorial on making them

http://quilting.about.com/od/quickpi...squaretria.htm

Snowball blocks: a square with hst's at each of the four corners. Looks kinda like a snowball.

I have done both, and now prefer not to cut. Snowballs make a really nice pattern combined with plain old nine patch squares. I'd upload a photo for you but dont know how to do this on a "comment".

I cut the underside of the snowball fabric, but I leave the base fabric intact.

The picture upthread is really a Square in a Square in a Square block.

You can view some Snowball blocks here:
http://www.straw.com/quilting/articles/snowball.html

Thank you for sharing this link. This is wonderful inspiration and with such simple blocks the outcome looks elegant. Great.

Thanks! I have seen snowball blocks before but didn't know what their name was.

Tara