For November we have three triangle-based blocks. All are very old, traditional blocks that make up into lovely quilts when used all by themselves. Birds in the Air is one of my special favorites. A whole quilt made to this pattern is unbelievably full of motion.

To make a 12" (12 1/2"with seam allowances) Birds in the Air block, make the following units:

Cut one 8 1/2" square of background material.

Make five 4 1/2" half-triangle squares. As always, I made mine oversize by cutting 5 1/2" squares to make them with, then trimming down.

Lay the pieces you have made out in the pattern and sew the top row.

Next, sew the two lower triangle squares on the right together and then join the resulting piece to the large square.

Finally, join the top row and the larger bottom piece together. Trim and border to size per your practice.

Prairie Queen is a combination of half-triangles and four patches. Make units as follows:

Make four 4 1/2" half-triangles. Again, I made mine oversize and trimmed down.

Make four 4 1/2" four-patches. I made these oversized and trimmed down, too. You can make them by cutting 2 1/2" strips, sewing them together and then cutting these into 2 1/2" sections. I preferred to cut 2 3/4" strips, sewing them together and then cutting them into 2 3/4" sections. Whichever way you do it, you then join two sections to make each four-patch. Measure the finished product to be sure it is 4 1/2" x 4 1/2". In my case, I ended up with deliberately oversized four patches. I used the 2 1/4" line crossing in my measuring square to trim my pieces to the correct size. Place the 2 1/4" line intersection on the middle of the four patch, trim the top and right sides, rotate the piece and repeat for the other two sides. You should get a perfect 4 1/2" four patch.

Cut one 4 1/2" square for the center.

Lay out the units per the block picture. Join your units into rows, then the rows into the full block.

Churn Dash is a very old and popular block. It has a lot of variations. Prairie Queen up above is one of them. I chose to show Prairie Queen first, since Churn Dash is a bit harder to make in our 12" size. it is usually made as an odd numbered size, i.e. 7" or 9". If you study the picture, you will see that this block is actually five units by five units in measurement. Five doesn't divide into 12 very well. You end up with many decimal points. You can work to the nearest 1/8" or 1/16" if you are great with math. I didn't bother too much. Here is how I made mine:

1. I decided on a size for the four half-triangles. I chose 4 3/4". Make four of these. These will finish up to 4 1/4" in the finished block, after bordering.
2. Cut one 4" square for the center. This will finish up to 3 1/2" square in the finished block.
3. The remaining four pieces are actually "two stripes". Their finished size in the block (after bordering) would be 3 1/2" x 4". Making it gets mathematically tricky. In a perfect world, in which I made perfect seams, it would require a 2 3/8" strip of print and a 2 3/8" strip of background. These would be sewn together to make a single strip 4 3/4" wide. If you can sew a pair of exact measurement strips together and get that measurement, wonderful. Cut it into 4" sections and you are ready to go. I chickened out. I cut wide strips and sewed them together, then cut the resulting double strip piece into 4" sections, then measure from the middle and trimmed the sides to produce the needed 4 3/4" x 4" pieces. However you do it, you will need four such pieces, with that final measurement. It isn't really critical if the color piece is slightly different from what I show, as long as the overall size of the piece is correct, and all four pieces are the same.
4. Once you have the pieces made, lay them out per the diagram. Sew your units together into rows and join the rows to make the block.

OK, that's it for November.

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