HillCountryGal

Took this picture at a club meeting. It's a simple enough block. However, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to recreate it. Know it's triangles, but how to make them slightly off center (points not meeting) while keeping the block square is my mental block.

Help.

katier825

It looks like you could take a square, cut it diagonally both directions, rearrange and resew. It looks to me like the offset is more of an optical illusion. But if not, you could just sew the two halves, then shift the seam a bit, sew the last seam, then square it up.

Pagzz

I think it is in Anita Grossman Soloman's Rotary Cutting Revolution as xcentric block though I don't have the book handy to confirm.

joe'smom

It also struck me that the not meeting is an illusion; that is, the fabric points are meeting, it's the designs on the fabric that aren't meeting because of facing different ways?

Tartan

It looks like the centers don't meet because the dominant colour of the strip along the edge is changed when cutting out the triangle. So light strip on one piece is meeting the dark strip on another.
If you want to off set them though it would be simple to do. Over cut your triangles, sew 2 together to make half the block, sew 2 more together and then move one half down to the desired off-set, sew the halves together and trim the block to the desired square.

Neesie

Couldn't you just sew two striped blocks together, one vertically and the other horizontally, then make HST from it?

PaperPrincess

I zoomed in as large as my browser would allow. I agree with joe's mom. I think it's an optical illusion due to the striped fabric. If you zoom in and look at the fuchsia block on the right, and the green/tan one above it you can see that it's just striped fabric. The blocks wind up with the bias at the outside edges. Some of the blocks are quite square, with the seams hitting the corners perfectly. Looks like some of them got stretched a bit and the seams got misplaced.

ManiacQuilter2

It is just center seam that give the look of being off set. I would make my triangles at least 2" bigger, sew them together with the offset seam and then trim the block down to a square size. HOPE that makes sense. You will be dealing with a bias edge on ALL sides of your blocks.

GrannieAnnie

You're right, because of the color of the striped material, the centers look off. They are not. Each block is simply 2 matching squares cut diagonally and set back together. fabrics should have some sort of stripe.

Simple pattern and looks to set together quickly---------except for the bias cuts.

HillCountryGal

Thanks y'all. I'm going to find some stripe fabric and give this a try. Very well could be the stripes are fooling my eye.