Hi there! I can’t believe the weekend has already come and gone!  My “weekend” isn’t quite over yet. My husband has today off since it’s Veteran’s Day.  So I technically had a 3-day weekend.  Which is awesome! That means more sewing time for me. 🙂  I hope you all had a fun weekend.   🙂 Today I am really excited to share a new tutorial with you.  

As I mentioned about a week ago, I was trying to figure out what to do with these charm squares I got  in the mail a little while ago.   I was sitting there staring at my design wall and all of a sudden an idea popped into my head!  I remembered seeing a similar idea from here that I thought was really cool.  Plus, I really wanted to try doing a block that used the “slicing” technique.  So this is what I cam up with:  I’m calling it the 4 patch-slice.
This is a really easy block and can be used to make several different designs!

So let’s get started:

 Supplies:

4 Charm Squares or 4 – 5″ x 5″ squares
1 – 3″ x width of fabric strip of a neutral color. 

Step 2:

Sew your four patches together. 

First sew the top two together and then chain piece your bottom two.  Press seams in opposite directions.  

You will now have these two pieces:

Now, sew your two pieces together.  Nestle your seams together! This will ensure your seams line up nicely. 

Press your block. 

Step 3:

Time to slice! 

Cut from one corner to the other in a diagonal line using your ruler and rotary cutter.
You now have two triangle pieces.

Step 4:

Place your white strip right side up and place one of your triangle on your strip like so.  Making sure right sides are together. Sew a 1/4″ seam all the way down.  Now, you are sewing on the bias so be really careful that you aren’t stretching your triangle at all.  Just let your sewing machine do the work and you will end up with really great results.  If you are worried about this, then pin your triangle to your strip first and that might help you so you don’t stretch your triangle.  Either way, just be careful. 🙂 Leave about a 2-3″ space of white fabric at the top and bottom of your triangle!  This is really important when you are squaring up your blocks.

Step 5:

Sew your other triangle on.

To ensure that your two triangles line up, make a little finger press like pictured:

Now, place your triangle on your fabric and sew a 1/4″ seam all the way down.

Step 6:

Press your block.  I honestly did not have a preference on which ways to press my seams on this specific block.  I just tried to stay consistent with each block.  You can do whatever works for you.  I did not press my seams open.

Step 7:

This is a really important step!! You need to square up these blocks so that when you go to sew them all together your white strips match up nicely! 

There is no center seam on this block, which is a bummer.  So what I did was folded my block in half and then I folded it again and pressed the corner with my finger.  So I could see where the middle point was.  

I then lined up my middle point on my mat and squared up my block to 10.5″ x 10.5″

Now here comes the fun part.  This block is really quite versatile!  You can make a chevron design using this block:

You can make a lattice-like design:

Or you can even do this design:

I’m sure you could dream up a few more designs if you wanted with this block.   I honestly wanted to do this in the chevron design, but I felt like I needed to make it wider to achieve the look I was going for. I only had so many squares to work with and so the chevron wasn’t really an option.  

So I was left to decide between the last two options.  I asked my husband his opinion and of course the engineer in him decided that he liked the lattice design because it seemed the most symmetrical.  The last design wasn’t symmetrical and so he was having a hard time liking it.  So he honestly wasn’t a lot of help!