stephaniequeen

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

gal288

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.

stephaniequeen

What are hst's?

Mo_Chride

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

Tara

gal288

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

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

gzuslivz

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

Marion T

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".

MTS

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

Murphy

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

Mo_Chride

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

Tara