Snowball Fish Tutorial

This quilt gets pinned a lot and is often referred to as the Snowball Fish with HSTs although no HSTs were used in this quilt. It seemed straight forward, but I've decided to finally provide a tutorial that I have tried to lock down in one image.

In a nutshell, one starts with a 4 by 5.5 inch rectangle and cut off a 1.5 inch strip for the fish tail. Then six 1.5 inch squares of the background fabric are laid face down in the corners. Then flip triangles are sewn. For this, one sews along the diagonal but slightly towards the outside. Iron the flap back so the corner of the top triangle match up with the outer corner. Trim away the excess fabric underneath the flip triangle. The last step is to sew the fish tail to the snowball (fish body). Lay the fish tail face down on top of the back of the fish so the triangles align. This will give you matching points, a sharp triangle and approval from quilting judges. Last but not least, make the fish some friends and keep them all away from marauding cats.

In the meantime, I am trying to figure out the border, I mean, the background set for the lion musical. I was even willing to be elaborate, but my idea turned out to be awful. The lions did not want me to add cheetah fabric, claiming cheetahs are good-for-nothing show-offs. The only agreement we could come to was the wavy fabric used in the lion manes. Unfortunately, I only have four inches left. However, there was a lot of waste trimming the lion manes, so I'm going to try to fashion the next border out of that. Stay tuned, so to speak.