Tutorial - More Birds in the Air

This month I am hosting the Block of the Month tutorial again for Bay Area Modern.  You can see the rest of the blocks on the BAM blog.

This block is a variation on the traditional Birds in the Air quilt block, translated to a 16-patch rather than 9.  This tutorial makes two blocks at a time.  One option for a 12" finished block is to make two sets of the 6" block and then arrange them in a four-patch.

The final look of the block will be like this if you chose to cut your 4 rectangles from background fabric:

Or like this if you chose to cut them from print fabric:

Starch all your fabric pieces before you begin because there is a lot of bias sewing in this block.  I use Best Press and press all seams open.
Sew and trim up the half square triangles using your preferred method.  If you are going for a scrappy look, you may want to sew in pairs.  If you are sticking with just 2 fabrics for the block, you can use this method to make 8 HSTs at once.

 All your pieces should look like this:

Lay out the pieces as shown below, then sew together in rows:

Sew the rows together (it's supposed to be a rectangle right now... don't worry!) Turn the block over to mark the back.  Draw a line on either side of the center diagonal, just touching the points of your print triangles:

Lay the pieced rectangle centered over the large rectangle (right sides together) and sew down each of the drawn lines.  Cut the in half between the sewn lines.

Press the seams, and trim off the extra background fabric to get a perfect 6.5" or 12.5".

Done!