How to Make the Quilt Blocks in the Morning Blooms Quilt

Published March 2026

Join Jen as she shows you how to make the two blocks we use in the Morning Blooms Patchwork Quilt Kit. This is a gorgeous pieced project designed by Shabby Fabrics featuring the timeless elegance of the Morning Blooms collection from Wilmington Prints. Inspired by a pleasing palette of purples, blues, and creams, this quilt embodies a perfect blend of sophistication and beauty. Finishes to approximately 65.5" x 82.5". Check the links below for everything you need.

In this video, you'll learn:

• Why a fresh rotary blade and a proper pressing/sizing routine matter before you cut a single piece.
• Two ways to make accurate half-square triangles — the Star Singles shortcut and the traditional draw-and-sew method.
• The intentional stacking and pinning technique that gets pinwheel and flying-geese points landing right on the money.
• How to fussy-cut and orient directional floral fabric for the setting triangles, including a fold trick for squares too big for your ruler.
• How the pieced blocks, side triangles, and corner triangles come together into the finished on-point layout.

Check the links for everything you need.

Introduction

Morning Blooms is built from two units repeated across the quilt: a pieced block that reads as a square straight on but gets turned “on point” (tipped onto its corner) once it's set into the quilt, and a floral setting triangle that's fussy cut so the border print in the fabric lands cleanly inside its space. Neither one is complicated on its own — the video is really about the handful of habits that make both come out accurate every time.

Two units, twelve times each. The whole quilt comes down to one pieced block and one setting-triangle unit, both repeated. Nail the technique once and the rest is just repetition.

Getting Your Fabric Ready

Cutting is where quilt block accuracy is won or lost, so a few habits pay off before the rotary cutter ever touches fabric:

• Press and consider sizing. A good press, plus a spray sizing if you use one, stabilizes the fabric and makes patchwork noticeably easier to cut and piece accurately.
• Test your rotary blade. If it's been a while since you swapped it, make a test cut on scrap fabric first. A clean cut means you're good to go; if you're pushing hard or the blade is skipping, replace it before you start — a dull blade makes for a miserable cutting session and inaccurate pieces.
• Reach for quality rulers. Consistent, easy-to-read rulers (Creative Grid rulers are shown throughout) make it much easier to cut the same size accurately, over and over, across a whole quilt's worth of pieces.

Know your ruler's markings. On a Creative Grid ruler, the white dots mark whole numbers and the black dots mark the fraction lines (half, one and a half, and so on) — and that holds true across their whole ruler line. Mixing up a black dot for a white one is an easy way to cut a piece a quarter inch short.

As you travel through your pattern, treat it like a recipe: work through the cutting and piecing instructions one step at a time, following the pressing arrows exactly as printed. They're not a guess — a lot of testing goes into choosing the pressing direction that makes seams interlock and lie flat, so following them (rather than improvising) is what gets you the flattest, most accurate blocks.

Strip Piecing the Block

Large sections of this block are built with strip piecing: sew your fabrics together as long strips first, press per your pattern's arrows, then subcut the strip set into the shorter segments your cutting chart calls for. It's faster and more consistent than cutting every small piece individually, and it keeps the block's seams interlocking cleanly once everything comes together.

1. Sew your strips together in the order and seam allowance your pattern specifies.
2. Press toward the darker fabric (or whichever direction your pattern's arrows indicate) — this is deliberate, not arbitrary, and it's what makes seams interlock later.
3. Square up one end of the strip set before subcutting, so every section comes off the strip the same size.
4. Subcut into the segment sizes your cutting chart lists, repeating across all the fabric you need for every block at once.

Clean up your edge before the first cut. The two ends of a strip set almost never line up perfectly, even when both strips were cut accurately — it just happens. Square off that ragged starting edge before you subcut, rather than trying to work around it.

When you're squaring up or subcutting, anchor your ruler into a corner rather than eyeballing the middle of the fabric: line up one of the ruler's grid lines along the top edge and another along the side edge before you cut. That two-point alignment is what tells you you're actually square, instead of just close.

Making the Half-Square Triangles

This block uses a number of half-square triangle (HST) units, and the pattern gives you two ways to make them — pick whichever suits how you like to work.

Option 1: Star Singles (no squaring up)

1. Cut your two fabrics to the size the Star Singles papers call for (this pattern uses the 3″ finished paper, with fabric cut a touch larger than the paper's stated size so there's a visible margin of fabric all the way around once the paper is centered on top).
2. Place your two fabrics right sides together, pin, and lay a sheet of the Star Singles paper on top with your pins sitting outside the printed tracks.
3. Set your machine's stitch length to about 1.5 and, if your machine has a needle-down function, engage it — both help you follow the dashed sewing lines cleanly and pivot precisely.
4. Sew directly on the dashed lines, needle down and pivoting at every marked point, all the way around in one continuous racetrack path.
5. Cut on every solid line. There's no separate trimming step — the cutting lines are already exactly a quarter inch from your stitching.
6. Peel the paper away (it releases easily) and press per your pattern's pressing instructions.

Eight perfect half-square triangles, no ruler required. One pass through the paper produces eight units at once, already trimmed to size by the printed cutting lines — no squaring up afterward, and the leftover paper sheets are handy to keep for future scrap projects.

Option 2: Traditional two-at-a-time

1. Cut your fabric to the same larger square size your pattern lists for the Star Singles method (8.5″ here), then cut that square in half in both directions — two straight cuts, not diagonal — to yield four smaller squares (4.25″) from each fabric.
2. Place one smaller square of each fabric right sides together and draw a line corner to corner on the wrong side of the top square, or use a diagonal seam guide tool if you have one — sewing directly on a drawn or guided line is more accurate than trying to hold a quarter inch on either side of an imagined line freehand.
3. Sew a scant quarter inch on both sides of that drawn line.
4. Cut apart directly on the drawn line to yield two HSTs from that pair.
5. Press open per your pattern's pressing instructions, trimming away the little dog-ear tips at the corners as you go.
6. Square each finished HST up to the size your pattern calls for (3.5″ here) using a small rotating cutting mat — lay the diagonal seam along the mat's guide line so there's a consistent margin of fabric exposed on every side, then trim, rotate, and trim again.

Every block needs a set of HSTs for its center pinwheel and another set for its corners, and the pattern is specific about which pressing direction each combination gets — keep track of which fabric pairing presses which way, since that's what makes the seams interlock later.

Building the Pinwheel and Flying Geese Units

This is where the block's points get made or lost, and it comes down to one habit: be intentional about how you stack and pin before you sew.

The pinwheel center

1. Lay your four half-square triangles out in the pinwheel arrangement first, so you can see the finished layout before you start sewing anything together.
2. Sew the top two HSTs together and the bottom two HSTs together into two half-units, following your pressing arrows — because the pressing direction was chosen deliberately, these seams should nest against each other rather than stack on top of one another.
3. To join the two halves, stack them right sides together, then fold back the top layer at the center seam and look straight down from above. Where the two seams cross should form a small, tight four-patch with no gap — that's your target point.
4. Pin directly through that crossing point first, then add a second pin nearby to keep everything from shifting before you sew.
5. Sew a scant quarter inch, aiming to have your needle pass just a hair to the outside of the “X” where the seams cross — not directly through the center of it, since the fabric itself has some bulk there.

Don't just hold the layers together and hope. Pinning at the exact spot where the seams need to meet, rather than pinning wherever is convenient, is what turns guesswork into a reliably sharp point. It's worth the extra few seconds every time.

If a seam resists pressing in the direction you need, warm it with the iron first — fabric moves more willingly once it's hot — and use a wooden clapper (or the flat side of a combination clapper/point-turner tool) to press the seam flat and hold it there while it cools. Seams that seemed determined to pop back up will lie flat once they've cooled under the clapper's weight.

The flying geese units

1. On the wrong side of your two corner squares, draw a line from corner to corner.
2. Place the first square right sides together on one corner of the rectangle, sew directly on the drawn line, then flip the corner open and press out (the “sew and flip” technique).
3. Repeat on the opposite corner with the second square, sewing on its drawn diagonal line and pressing out.
4. Trim away the excess fabric behind each stitched corner, leaving a straight quarter-inch seam allowance — the trimmed-away triangles are perfectly good “opportunity fabric” for small scrap projects.

Keep your two fabrics in the same position — the darker one consistently on the left, the lighter one consistently on the right, for example — on every single flying-geese unit you make. That consistency is what lets the units drop into the block in the right orientation without you having to think about it each time.

Assembling the Block

With your strip-pieced sections, half-square triangles, pinwheel, and flying geese units all made, the block comes together in rows rather than piece by piece:

1. Lay out the whole block first, exactly as it will look when finished, so you can confirm every unit is in the right spot before you sew anything.
2. Sew the block together in horizontal rows — top row, middle row, bottom row — rather than adding pieces on one at a time as you go.
3. Where a row-to-row seam crosses a pieced point (like the pinwheel's center), use the same stack-fold-and-look-from-above method described above to pin exactly on the point before sewing.
4. Join the rows together, following your pattern's pressing instructions for the final seams.

Sections first, then join the sections. Building complete rows and joining those, rather than adding one small piece after another straight across the block, is what keeps a quilt block from drifting out of square. It's a small difference in order that makes a real difference in the result.

If you do miss a point here or there, that's completely normal — seam ripping and resewing is part of the process, not a sign you did something wrong.

Cutting the Fussy-Cut Setting Triangles

Because this quilt is set on point, the spaces around the pieced blocks are filled with setting triangles cut from a directional floral print — which means orientation matters just as much as size.

• Side setting triangles. Cut three squares (19″ in this pattern) and quarter each one on both diagonals to yield four triangles per square, twelve total. You'll only use ten of them in the quilt — the extra two are simply opportunity fabric for another project, not a sign you cut something wrong.
• Corner setting triangles. Cut two smaller squares (10″ in this pattern) and halve each one once on the diagonal to yield two triangles per square, four total.

Check the fabric is right side up before you cut a single diagonal. With a directional print, which corner you cut off changes which way the motif points once the triangle is sewn in. Confirm your fabric is oriented the way you want it to read in the finished quilt before every diagonal cut, not just the first one.

A large square's corner-to-corner diagonal is longer than it looks — a 19″ square's diagonal is longer than most single rulers, including a 24.5″ ruler laid corner to corner. When your ruler won't reach, fold the square in half diagonally first (matching the corners exactly) and press or finger-press a crease along the fold. That crease becomes your cutting guide, and it's accurate as long as the square itself was cut precisely to begin with.

Setting triangles like these are cut on the bias, which means the edges are naturally stretchy. If you're only going to add stabilizing spray sizing to one fabric in this whole project, make it this one — a stretchy bias edge is much easier to handle, and much less likely to distort while you're piecing, once it's been stabilized.

Since the corner and side setting triangles look similar at a glance but are cut to different sizes and need to face specific directions once sewn in, consider labeling each one as you cut it — especially if you might set the project aside and come back to it later.

Putting the Quilt Together

With your blocks and setting triangles all made, final assembly is a matter of careful orientation and working in sections:

1. Lay the whole quilt top out right side up before you sew a stitch, exactly as it will look finished. With a directional print in the setting triangles, this step is what keeps every motif pointing the direction you want — toward the outside of the quilt, in this case — instead of getting sewn in backwards.
2. Work in diagonal rows, sewing blocks and setting triangles into sections first, then joining those sections together — the same principle as assembling an individual block in rows rather than piece by piece.
3. Follow your pattern's pressing instructions at each seam; some of the final joining seams are pressed open specifically to distribute the extra bulk where multiple seams meet.

None of this is difficult — it's procedural. Careful pinning, careful pressing, and an honest quarter-inch seam allowance, repeated block after block, is what turns these individually simple units into a quilt top that lies flat and square.

Morning Blooms is a lovely one to demystify — two straightforward units, repeated with care, and an on-point layout that looks far more complicated than it actually is to build.

Pick up your Morning Blooms quilt kit, along with the coordinating backing and any notions you need, while it's still available.

For personal use only, not for commercial production. No part of this pattern may be reproduced, shared, or distributed in any form unless given express written consent by Shabby Fabrics. Not to be used with any online classes or video tutorials other than the official Shabby Fabrics tutorial. All designs, photographs, and images are protected by federal copyright law. All rights reserved.