Tula Pink Nebula Block of the Month- February
Posted by April Hansen on
I know January’s blog for the quilt along came rather late in the month, especially for those of you (not really me) who take pride in being the early birds.
Okay, well, I mean, I do try to be at least 15 minutes early to pretty much EVERYTHING but I’m also a PROcrastinator when it comes to deadlines. (Although, I only ever pulled one all-nighter in college. And one was plenty.)
Anyhow, going forward I’ll try to have my blog for the month done by the second week of the month.
This month I discovered a few things that I think will help you.
First off, yes- I screwed up cutting my blue strips with the Sapphire Mineral print. However, that actually helped me later on! 
Cutting and sewing strips is the first order of business. Not much to see here, although if anything I’d recommend being a bit generous with your 2 inches or scant with your seam allowance. Otherwise, you risk having scant triangles and half hexies in the next step.
Here’s where I messed up with the blue strips. But before this, take your two strip sets (or four, really). Press- and whichever way you press one A/C set, press the B/D set the other way. This will help give you more (well, it will give you some versus none at all) nested seams.
After you cut your strip sets into triangles and half hexies, sew them all into triangles and then diamonds, according to the directions in the pattern.
Sew the top two and bottom two diamonds together.
You’ll now have two large parallelograms, with only one final seam left. To help this seam nest more at that nasty hexagon intersection right in the middle of the block, I’ve circled the seams you just sewed and indicated pressing them in opposite directions (as best I could on my phone’s “markup” function, at least.) If you have no other nested seams, this one is pretty important, as it’s an intersection of six points, and a lot of machines will try to shift or do something wonky going over so much fabric if it’s not handled carefully.
And after that, Ta-Da! You have your finished block two!
I don’t know about you, but this one felt easier than block one? The cutting was far less time consuming, which I think really changed my opinion of things- cutting is probably one of my lesser favorite parts of quilting. I’d rather be at my machine!