Flying Crow Block

The eighth pieced block in our For the Birds Sampler Series is known as Flying Crow. Personally, I don't get where the crows come in, but I like the block anyway.

To begin you will need a light, a dark, a medium, and a contrast/center fabrics. I selected the red "eyeball" print as my dark, a cream print as the light, the green homespun check as the medium value, and the serpentine flame-stitch for my center.

Cut the following pieces:

• Four (4) light 3.5 inch squares
• One (1) light 3.5 inch square
• One (1) light 4.5 inch square (mark diagonally for HST)
• One (1) medium 4.5 inch square (mark diagonally for HST)
• Two (2) dark 4.5 inch squares
  

Use the medium 4.5" square and a dark 4.5" square together and the light 4.5 " square and a dark 4.5 " square together, to make four (4) HSTs. For more instructions on how to make Half Square Triangles follow this link to my HST tutorial.
Mark a diagonal line across the back of the two (half light) HSTs... Like I've shown in this photo.

Because what we are going to do is put a half medium HST with a half light HST and sew down one side of the diagonal, then up the other, and cut apart -- just as though we were making plain squares into HSTs.

When we press them open we have four (4) matching Quarter Square Triangle units. You can see they do get a bit wonky (that one on the left center in this photo really needed to be trimmed straight).

Before we sew those together (as laid out), we need to make sure the QST units are squared up.

They should measure 3.5 inches square (just like the other/plain pieces). To make sure that we get our X shape centered here's how we do it:

Half of 3.5 is 1.75.

So use your see-through ruler and put the 1.75 (one and 3 quarters inch) mark at the center of the hourglass, the center of the X. Trim those two sides. Rotate the block, put the 1.75 mark back over the center of the square and trim the last two sides. (The already trimmed sides should fall on the 3.5 inch line of the ruler.)

Once those pieces are trimmed and squared-up you are more likely to get an evenly square finished block.

Lay out the block again and sew in rows:

Sew the three resulting rows together and you get your finished block. Give it one last press and we're done.