Community Sampler Week 4

Another week and another lovely block for the Community Sampler.  If you haven't already joined in, make sure you visit Sharon Holland's blog for the weekly patterns and expert tutorials.  Maureen Cracknell is co-hosting this sew along, so pop to her blog for lots of inspiration too.  

This week is the third block, Ribbon Star.  The instructions call for four fabrics, although I decided to add a fifth so that I could have a fussy cut central square again.  In the early blocks, I am trying not to repeat fabrics I have used already, to get a good mix of Charleston fabrics throughout the finished quilt.  

These are the fabrics I chose. 

As with previous blocks, I chose to cut my directional prints so that they would be right way up in the finished on-point quilt.  Actually, I only did this with the umbrellas and pineapples; I decided to cut myself some slack and 'go with the flow' on the pink print, I'm not sure I could get my head around trying to make them the right way up in triple square triangle units!

One thing to note, if you have decided to fussy cut these directional prints - you will have cut these squares on the bias and will therefore have four stretchy bias edges.  Take particular care when pressing your seams and when matching up edges to sew.  I did end up stretching one edge slightly making my central square ever so slightly bigger than it was at the start.  

Once again, Sharon's instructions are clear and easy to follow, so the finished block is quick to assemble with nicely matching seams.  Generally, I tend to press my seams open as I sew although for this block I pressed my seams to the dark side.  This is essential if you are using a bloc loc ruler to trim your half square triangles and means that you can nestle the seams together neatly when sewing the three rows together to assemble your block. 

Here's my finished block, perfect for another rainy UK day...

The position of the pink part of the triple square triangle units does give an illusion that the block is wonky, (which made me double check that I had made it square) but also gives a lovely swirly pinwheel look which I like 

If you are sewing along, make sure you also check the Community Sampler hashtag for such a huge variety of blocks and inspiration.