Craft Book Challenge - Quilt Block

First of all, I was very pleased to hear that Australians and New Zealanders all say bloody hell!  Excellent.  OK, so my dad's second favourite method of cursing is "sodding hell".  Do you all say that too?  Anyway, on with the blog post...

 

I realised I hadn't made something from one of my craft books for the Craft Book Challenge last month, and July is running out so I thought I'd better get on it!  I decided I wanted to make a little coaster for my computer desk so chose a quilt block from 501 Quilt blocks - Better Homes and Gardens.  Is it cheating to just do a quilt block for the CBC?

As the computer desk is in the dining room, the fabric had to be Lily and Will, it's actually blue, I don't know why it looks pink in the photo below.

I had to lay all the pieces out as I went along to make sure I cut the right fabrics.  The book doesn't have instructions at all so this was a bit of a challenge, especially as it involved HSTs, quarter block triangles (which I'd never done!) and a bit of maths as the blocks in the book are bigger than I wanted. 

I have no idea if this is the right way to do a quarter square triangle, but it had the desired effect!  I made a HST, then put my acrylic ruler on the 1/4 inch mark from corner to corner and cut it.  This meant I could sew a 1/4 inch seam and it would be in the right place.  It seemed to work.

And here's the final block!  I can't remember what it's called... I'm really chuffed with it despite a couple of not-quite-meeting points.

See, they don't quite match but I think it looks pretty good anyway.

I sewed it right sides together with a piece of the spotty fabric.  I didn't use wadding this time, I used fusible fleece on each piece so there was no shifting when I turned it right sides out.  I sewed around the edge with invisible thread, then attempted to stitch in the ditch.  The thread kept snapping so I gave up.  Shouldn't I have used invisible thread in my machine?  Is there another way to achieve "invisible" quilting?

And here's the back.  You can see where I did the quilting!  It will always be this side down though so I don't suppose it matters.

I'd love to use this pattern for my placemats, but I think I'd have to use 6 blocks laid out in 2 rows and that might be a bit much for four placemats!