tips & tricks tuesdays: Leona @ Leona's Quilting Adventure! .... and .... quick snowball blocks

Hi all!

Thanks for stopping by Tips & Tricks Tuesdays: what would MacGyver do at Sew at Home Mummy!

Today is a very special day! Leona at Leona's Quilting Adventure is hosting Tips and Tricks!

When you're done here, make sure to head over to her site, and, if you have a tip, trick or tutorial, link up with her! Or, show her the love and leave her a nice comment :)

EDITED: Leona's having some technical difficulties with the linky party, so you can link your tip or trick up here, below :)

I have a quick tip to link up today with Leona.

It's all about snowball blocks lately in my house!

To create a snowball block, you stack a small square in each corner of a larger square, and sew on a diagonal.

Now, instead of drawing diagonal lines across each small square (which in my case is 608 times...yuck) like this:
 ... you can use your ruler to line up the distance from the needle to the edge of the fabric corner, like so:
 ... and then use a long piece of painter's tape or masking tape to create a guide, using the edge of your ruler as reference, and adhere the tape to your machine, like so:
This cuts prep time in half for these blocks:

and considering I have to make 168 of these bad boys, I need to save as much time as I can!

Now! Head over to Leona's blog and see what she's up to!

Happy quilting!