Monday, December 9, 2013

Irish Puzzle

What to do with all those tiny little bonus HST's (half square triangles) from Celtic Solstice step two???  It's a Puzzle.  An Irish  Puzzle to be exact.
Yep, there's a block for that!
Little Irish Bear was delighted to find that the traditional Bear's Paw block is also called Irish Puzzle according to Maggie Malone's "5,000 Quilt Block Designs."

My little HST's are squaring up to 1.25 inches.  It looks like we'll have a whole lot of them in green/neutral and green/yellow.  So let's do the math.

The Irish Puzzle block is made up of four 'paws'.  Each of those uses 6 tiny HST's.  In addition, cut one light corner square at 1.25 inches, one green square at 3.5 inches and one light square at 3.5 inches.

From the 3.5 inch squares, make a pair of 3 inch HST's.   (I already had leftover neutral 3.5 strips from step one.) Stitch 1/4 inch on either side of the diagonal and you have two HST' that square up to 3 inches. Easy as can be!

When sewing the 'paws' together, make sure that your seam is scant so the strips of small HST's fit against the 3 inch HST correctly.  (My seams were a little big at first and finished a little shorter than 3 inches. Oops!)

Four 'paw' blocks make the 7 inch Irish Puzzle block.

Little Irish Bear is very proud of his idea for using up those Celtic Solstice bonus blocks!

2 comments:

  1. And he should be proud of it because it so cute!

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  2. Little Irish bear gets a great big cyber hug ((((( )))) and a chocolate bar from me. That is too perfect. Now if only my little HST all measure 1.25 I'll be lucky. I'm so glad you came up with this idea. I love using little cut off for something else. Mine will not be all green, but who cares. I'm saving this post. Thanks so much.

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