Craftsy - August Block 1

I've been busy catching up on some things and lagging behind with my BOMs this month!  August blocks from Craftsy are my favorite (NOT!!!) HST piecing.  Ugh.  I had trouble with the HST block from In Color Order.  But I'm happy to say I had very little trouble with this block.

Craftsy August 2012 Block 1

I learned something I probably should have learned years ago, but since I'm self-taught, I'm sure there are many little things I don't know that would relieve so much stress from my cutting/piecing/quilting adventures.  Amy said something in the instructions that totally opened my eyes.  She said to cut a half square triangle in half FROM THE WRONG SIDE!  Duh!  I had been balancing that diagonal line on the ruler on the seam from the right side all this time!  I also realized that one of the problems I had been having when squaring up these little blocks was that I was only looking at half of the piece when trimming.  I was making sure I had the ruler placed straight on the diagonal and that there was seam allowance on all sides....but I never paid any attention to centering the center and ruler.  No wonder I had some HST points with more fabric on one side of the point than the other.  Today, I put a piece of blue painters tape across the ruler making a nice X guideline on the diagonal.  Those little hourglass blocks are pretty much dead on at the points.  WooHoo!!

Altho it looks like I lost points in this block, I actually cut off the top when taking the picture.  I'm losing points everywhere! LOL

Keep on Stitchin'!!