Testing, Testing...

I bought this specialty ruler for adding corner triangles to blocks when I was in Paducah in April. I thought I could use it to snowball the corners of my Dresden blocks, but I found the instructions confusing. I was afraid to mess up that project so I just made them the usual way. Here's the special ruler:

Since then I made something else with snowballed corners, and I sort of figured out the ruler, but it involved making oversized triangles and trimming the block afterward. OK, faster than the original method. But could there be a way to use this ruler in combination with die-cut triangles so no trimming is needed?

I'm making 6" finished (6-1/2" unfinished) blocks with 3" triangles on opposite sides. For 2 test blocks, I cut 2 background squares and die cut 4 triangles.

The corners of the background square will have to be trimmed before the triangles can be added. I figured out where to align the ruler.

Just double checking before cutting, to make sure the triangles can be sewn in the right place.

OK, looks like if I cut there it'll work. I cut opposite corners off the background square. Looks like my triangles will line up just fine.

Sewing them with a 1/4" seam:

Looking good! After the triangles were pressed outward, the blocks measured exactly the right size without any trimming.

And the points came out nicely when the blocks were joined with a slightly scant 1/4" seam.

A successful test. I learned that I can save the time and trouble of cutting squares, marking the diagonal, and trimming away the bonus triangles when making snowball corners.  If I make something with dozens of blocks, this would be a huge time saver.


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