Oasis QAL: quick piecing the churn dashes

This week I am working on two things: quilting my double wedding ring quilt and piecing the churn dash blocks for the Midnight at the Oasis QAL.
for those of you sewing along with me, have you noticed how tiny the pieces are for these babies?

I thought I would post some suggestions for making this a little less tedious…

First: triangle paper. This is my favorite way to piece large quantities of half square triangles. The only drawback is that they all end up the same, so if you want a more scrappy look, I have a tutorial about different options for piecing these. Or, just use smaller pieces of triangle paper to make more variety.

I am making all of my little HST’s for the corners of the churn dashes with blue and white so I used triangle paper: cut and layer fabric, sew (never even have to lift the foot!), cut, tear away, and press.

Second: strip piecing. I love strip piecing!
Cut long strips from the fabrics for the center of the block 1 1/2″ (mine will be a white square), and the narrow strips for each side 1″ (pink). Sew them like this…

Then cut the strip into 1 1/2″ sections…

do the same for the narrow strips on top and bottom of the center square (1″ strip each of background, blue, and inner strip, pink)

put it all together and, voila…almost there…

Next cut 1″ strips of the background fabric and sew the center square/2-pink-strip units along the length of the strip, cut them apart, and press.

I didn’t do this last step yet because I am not positive I am going to make all those pieces with the light blue. Maybe it would be fun to do something else? You could make it even faster by cutting a 1 1/2″ square to sew between the pink strip units and then piecing the border in three strips instead of individual blocks. Did I lose you?

Anyway, I think these are pretty cute! what’s not so cute is…

pressing over 100 tiny half square triangles. No way to speed that up, just try not to burn your fingers!

Sharon