RSC Sampler - Broken Dishes

I started to like broken dishes quite a bit while making Jamestown landing. So many ways to arrange a simple unit!

Start with 2 inch strips of light and dark.  Place them right sides together.  Using the easy angle ruler, cut 16 HST units.

I was curious as to how long the strips needed to be.  Two HST units together are about 3 inches long.   16 units divided by two times three inches should be 24.  So I think 24 inches should do it.  Two 12 inch strips would work as well or whatever combination of scraps you have to bring you to the 16 subunits needed.  You could even mix and match colors to scrappy it up a bit.

Sew the HST units along the hypotenuse, trim the dog ears and press the seams toward the dark fabric.

Start by sewing all the units into twosies.  Notice that the center seams meet in the middle, but the dark is on the bottom of the left and the top of the right.

The HST units are easiest to sew if you start on corner where the seams are not all meeting.  As long as all the blocks are arranged the same and with dark touching light, it will work out in the end.  

Press the twosies with the seams all going toward the dark fabric.  

Pair the twosies up into pairs.  Again, dark should pair with light.  The seams should alternate if you have pressed correctly.  You should have four units, each at 3.5 inches unfinished.

Place the four broken dishes together again alternating the dark and light squares.  Carefully press from the back to make sure all of the seams lie flat.

Of course I realized as I was posting this block that I had already done a broken dishes block this year.  No need to worry though.  Broken dishes is one of those blocks that can go lots of ways.  Just turn the dark corners in to the center to get a star.  Instead of unsewing the green block which had beautiful seams, I dug out the pink block which did not.  So it is now a star and not the same block at all anymore.