I like to think of this as a 'PS' post to my Northern Lights introductions and it was sort of prompted by my collecting together my bird cushions - and a few quilts - for a zoom chat with my pal Jo Westfoot's gorgeous Quilt Hive members.
Our conversation ranged wildly - my fault, sorry Jo - but we did have a good chat about making beaks with placement templates, which reminded of this post. And as a new bird has joined the flock with a quite distinctive beak, I thought you might enjoy this tutorial which I shared with my block-of-the-month friends.
How to make a Puffin's beak (as you do)...
The instructions refer to the Puffin pattern - available as a block or in the Northern Lights Sampler - and you can find links to both at the end of this post.
STEP 8 (page 32 in the pattern book): To make the puffin's beak we will need a 2½" square of red and yellow prints, a 2" x 3" background piece and a 1½" square of background; the first step is to make a half square triangle by snowballing the 2½" yellow print square with the 2½" red print square. This HST will form the base of the beak unit.
The next step is to mark a placement line using the Puffin Beak Template (page 50 in the pattern book) and there are two ways you can do this: either using an LED lightbox that you can slip between the pages of your book, or by photocopying the template - or tracing it onto template plastic - and cutting it out. I use a water-soluble pen to mark my line, dotting along the edge of the template, but you can use a ruler and your favourite marking pen and mark a full line if you'd prefer. We also need to trim the 2" x 3" background piece that we'll be placing on that line, offsetting the diagonal cut by ½" from the bottom left-hand corner.
The reason we offset the diagonal cut is because it creates the same angle as our marked line, so that - once we've sewn it into place - the edge of the unit will still have straight-of-grain edges. So, the next step is to place the trimmed background piece on the placement line, pin and stitch ¼" away from the line.
Flip the background piece ‘open’ and press well. As you can see , it's over sized. Then turn your block to the wrong side and trim away the excess, using the base HST as a guide. Once the excess has been trimmed you can then trim down the HST to reduce bulk.
Finally, snowball the top left-hand corner of the beak unit with a 1½" square. Ta-da! You've made the puffin's beak!!
You can find all of the Northern Lights blocks collected together, along with their marvellous Maelstrom setting, in the PDF Pattern Book here. If you prefer a printed Pattern Book you can find them here.
Now, I suppose I'd better put those quilts away...
Nicola xx
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