Lori Dickman could not find a name for a block she kept seeing online, so she named it herself. Autumn's Embrace is episode eleven of her Speedy Solutions Scrap Buster series, and one block makes the whole quilt: thirty and a half inches unfinished, thirty eight inches once a four inch border goes on. She drew it in quilt design software. The video is above. The measurements below are worth having in writing, because one of them decides whether the block works.
Five inch squares in dark, medium and light for the half square triangles. Four and a half inch light squares. One six and a half inch square in dark brown for the center. Two and a half inch strips sewn into two strip sets, one of three golds and one of two oranges.
The half square triangles come from the five inch squares, trimmed to four and a half, and she presses them open. Any square ruler with a forty five degree line will do that trimming.
The strip sets get subcut into four segments at eight and a half inches and four at twelve and a half. Those become the block's sides. The four and a half inch light squares are then snowballed onto them, stitched just inside the drawn line to allow for the turn of the fabric.
Here is the line to get right. On the short units the drawn line runs one way, and on the long units it runs the other. Lori is direct about why: the curve of the flower only closes if the corners lean in opposite directions. Sew them all the same way and the piecing is still accurate, the seams still match, and the shape is gone. The Quilter's Bible makes the general point: corner triangles sewn across neighboring blocks are what create secondary patterns. Direction is the mechanism. The short units are trimmed to eight and a half, the corner blocks to twelve and a half.
The block then goes together in three rows, which Lori calls a big huge nine patch. If strip sets are new ground, our guide to nine patch quilt blocks, strip sets and the sizes they make covers them.
She also says the values are yours to move, darks for mediums and mediums for lights. Her channel is Quilting with Lori, and her free two page pattern is linked under the video on YouTube.
