Chinese Lanterns Quilt Block

This is a fun pattern that creates a 3 dimensional look with the placement of the darl, medium and light fabrics.

The angles are gentle enough to sew, but be careful not to stretch the patches, or you will end up with a misshapen block.

Also watch how you fold the seam allowances at the points of the triangles to avoid excess bulk.

This is a great pattern for Chinese New Years.

Saturday, as I was flipping through the pages of one of my books, I ran across a new use for freezer paper.

I’ve used it for years for hand applique – place the freezer paper on the back of the fabric, shiny side up (we’re not talkin’ eggs, here), and then press the seam allowance onto the freezer paper to hold it in place.

Then you can press the piece onto your background fabric and the freezer paper will hold the entire piece in place as you sew it onto your background.

It works well, especially when you get the freezer paper exactly the right temperature to melt some of its wax. (That’s the tricky part, and sometimes it takes me a few tries to get it to stick.)

But this tip was new.

It was to iron the freezer paper onto bias edges to keep them in place when you sew strips or patches.

Interesting.

So, for this week’s block, I decided to try it.

I searched for a block that had some triangles that I find a little more challenging to sew. I’m not even sure what they are called, but they are long and skinny and don’t have right angles. They are just a pain to sew.

The block is called Augusta, and the video is posted below.

I cut the fabric first.  Next time I may press the fabric onto the freezer paper and then cut it so the raw edges and the side of the paper are even.

You will see in the video that it is possible to see through the freezer paper in order to sew the pieces together, but I still think it would be better to have
the edges even.

It was somewhat easier to sew, however, now that the block is finished, I see that it is sorely cockeyed – and a fantastic subject for an article about how to
square-up your blocks!

Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, visit www.QuiltBlockLibrary.com to get a free download of the pattern.