Squared Away Block 9

Hello all, and welcome back to the Squared Away quilt project!  This quilt was designed by me and Angela of soscrappy as a fun, free project to use up some scraps.  If you have just found this quilt along or have missed a block, links to all of the blocks so far can be found on the tab at the top of this page or the tab on Angela's page at soscrappy.  This is our next-to-last block!
 
Here is our block for this month:

Queen Charlotte's Crown, Nancy Cabot, 1930s

This block is called Queen Charlotte's Crown, a Nancy Cabot block from the 1930s.  This block looks complicated, but it's made of the same 25 pieces as all of the other blocks, so just follow the directions and you'll be fine.

This block is usually made with an accent color, though you can choose not to use an accent as well, or you can use multiple accent fabrics.  I used yellows, but green or pink would also look great with dark blues or blacks.  You'll need to decide whether you'd like to use all 2-1/2 inch squares and hsts to make the block, or if you'd like to cut a larger piece and make two 4-1/2 inch half-square triangles for the corners.  This will affect your cutting and piecing, so read all the way through the tutorial and decide what you'd like to do before you do any cutting.

Grab some dark blue or black scraps and let's make some blocks!

Cutting for a 10-inch block:
* for hsts, can oversize to trim down

                                    To use all 2-1/2 inch squares:                         To use larger corner squares:


Cut from the blue:            2 5-3/4 inch squares *                                             1  5-3/4 inch square*
                                                      3 2-1/2 inch squares                                             1 4-7/8 inch square*
                                                                                                                                         2 2-7/8 inch squares*
                                                                                                                                         1 2-1/2 inch square

Background:                         1 5-3/4 inch square*                                                1 5-3/4 inch square*
                                                    2 2-1/2 inch squares                                                2 2-1/2 inch squares

Accent:                                  1 5-3/4 inch square*                                                1 4-7/8  inch square*
                                                    4 2-1/2 inch squares                                              2 2-7/8 inch squares*
                                                                                                                                       2 2-1/2 inch squares

Construction:

The only unit that we're making for this block is half-square triangles. Pair up the 5-3/4 inch squares of the blue, accent and background and use the Magic 8 method to make 8 hsts at a time.  Pair up the other matching squares and make hsts using the conventional method.  All of your hsts should measure 2-1/2 inches, unless you are making the larger squares to make the larger corner hsts.  These larger hsts should measure 4-1/2 inches.

For either option you should have 8 blue/background hsts.  If you are using all 2-1/2 inch squares, you should also have 8 blue/ accent hsts.  If you are using the larger hsts,  you should have two 4-1/2 inch large hsts and 4 blue/accent hsts.

The hsts are all the units we need.  On to assembly!

Assembly:

First, make the corners. If you made the larger hsts, your 4-1/2 inch hsts are used for these corners, so this piece is already made and you can skip to the next step.  If you did not opt to make the larger hsts, use blue/ accent hsts, a blue square and an accent square to make  the first corners:

Make two of these corners.  You can either spin your seams or press to the blue.  

For the second corners, use the blue/ background hsts, the background squares, and the accent squares as shown:

Make two of these corners.  You can either spin your seams or press to the blue, which ever makes you more comfortable.

Finally,  join the remaining hsts to make stacks of two, as shown:

Notice that these face in opposite directions.  You will need two of each combination.  Either press to the lower hsts or press this seam open.  I spun my seams for the corner pieces and found that pressing this seam open worked best since the seams for the corners end up in opposite directions.

That's it!  Lay out the pieces as shown, paying special attention to the directions of the hsts.

Join the units into rows and the rows into a finished block.  Give it a good press, stand back, and admire!

For this month, I made three 10-inch blocks:

For my 15-inch blocks, I had a small problem since my background is dark blue.  Here was my solution:

Gold crowns! For this option, I did not use any accent colors and simply made 12 gold/ background hsts, plus the larger ones for the corners.  I think this looks really good with the dark blue.

That finishes off 90% of our quilt!  As always, go on over to Angela's to see some more blocks and some of her variations.  If you'd like, remember that Angela has a linkup at her blog every Saturday, and we would all love to see your blocks.  You can also link up Instagram posts there, and be sure to tag me (@academicquilter) and/or use #squaredawayquilt so I won't miss seeing your pretty blocks.

Next month is our last block!  It will be posted right here on Saturday, October 6.  See you there!

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC18.