Row By Row - October

 This month we will be making a 9 inch block.  Huge, right!?  It is made from 4 HST units along with a wide (2.5) inch sashing strip in two directions.  I'll be using an easy angle ruler to make the HST units, but you can use the favorite method of your choice.  Each HST is 4 inches unfinished.  Therefore if you are making them from squares cut in half or sewn on either side of a drawn line, then the squares should be cut 4 and 3/8 inches.  Honestly, I would probably use 4.5 inch squares and trim them us a tiny bit at the end, but there are so many ways to make HST units.  Choose your favorite.

 Using the easy angle ruler method, I cut 4 inch strips of fabric in light orange and background along with 2.5 inch strips of dark orange for the sashing strips.

 The sashing strips then need to be cut again into 2 4 inch strips and one 9.5 inch strip per block.

 Stack the background and light orange fabric right sides together and use the easy angle ruler to cut 4 HST units.

 Here are all the pieces ready to go:
4 HST units
2 rectangles 2.5 by 4 inches
1 rectangle 2.5 inches by 9.5 inches

 Sew the HST units along the hypotenuse, trim dog ears and press with the seams going toward the orange.

 The HST units will form the corners of the block.  Arrange them so that the orange corners face the center of the block.  Use the photo for reference.  Use the darker sashing strips to separate the corner blocks.

Sew one HST to either side of each short sashing strip.  Press toward the darker fabric.  Finally, one of these pieced subunits onto either side of the long sashing strip.  Normally I would press toward the dark again, but for ease of assembly of the final blocks into a row, you should press away from the dark and toward the pieced subunits.
For the large quilt you should make 8 of these blocks, and for the smaller version you should make 6.  This is the last block of the sampler.  Next step -- assembly of the rows!