Intricate Stitches--Red

Welcome back to the Intricate Stitches BOM quilt!  It's time for a red block at last, which will certainly give the quilt a shot of nice, warm color.  This is our eleventh block, can you believe it?  At this rate, we'll be done in no time.

Here is this month's block:

This block is called Arrow Crown, from a book by Thelma Heath from 1940.  This is #1164 in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia.  Like all of our blocks, it looks complicated, but is made up of really common units that come together in a nice pattern at the end.

Let's make this block!

Cutting:

You will need two main colors plus a background and an accent color.  I used a deep red and gold, plus a shot of yellow-green for an accent.  I almost went with orange, but the green gave it a nice zing, don't you think?

From the red, cut:

     1 4-3/4 inch square*
     3 4-1/4 inch squares
     4 2 inch squares

From the gold:

     2 4-3/4 inch squares*
     1 3-1/2 inch square
     4 2 inch squares

From the white:

      1 4-3/4 inch square
      2 4-1/4 inch squares*
      4 2-3/8 inch squares
      4 2 inch squares

From the yellow-green:

      8 2 inch squares

*These are for making half-square triangles, so you can oversize these if you need to.

Done with cutting--let's go sew this block!

Construction:

The first step is to make the half-square triangles.  Since we need 8 of each of the colors, let's use the "Magic 8" method, okay?  It's fast and easy!  Use this tutorial and the red, gold, and white 4-3/4 inch squares to make 8 gold/ white, and 8 red/gold hsts.

If you normally oversize your hsts and cut them down to the right size, you can use 5 inch squares and have plenty of room for trimming.  In no time at all we'll have a couple of nice, colorful piles of hsts. These should be 2 inches to finish at 1-1/2 inches in the block.  Here's a tip--if you press the squares after you stitch them together, it's easier to get accurate cuts between the stitching lines.

Is anyone else thinking "Gryffindor"?

Done with those! On to the flying geese--

Take one of the 4-1/4 inch red squares and the 4 2-3/8 inch white squares and make 4 flying geese using the "heart method," found HERE.  These should each measure 2 by 3-1/2 to finish at 1-1/2 by 3 in the block.

On a side note, I've never oversized these to make larger geese to cut down, but if you have, just be sure the final geese measure 2 by 3-1/2 so they'll be the right size in the block.

One more unit to make!  On to the quarter-square triangles--

Take the remaining red and white 4-1/4 inch squares and cut all of them from corner to corner twice to make 4 triangles:

Position the triangles like this and stitch them all together in red and white pairs:

Press the seams towards the red. Stitch the pairs into 4 quarter square triangles that measure 3-1/2 inches to finish at 3 inches in the block.

Yes, there are other ways to make quarter square triangles, but I think this is the fastest way and it goes pretty quickly.  It's also really accurate because you only have to cut and stitch once.  Try it--it's fun!

That's it for the units, now we'll move on to putting them together!

Assembly:

First, take the quarter square triangles and the flying geese and stitch them together as shown:

These are the side pieces.  Make 4 of these.

Next, gather all of the hsts and the squares that you cut at the beginning.

Set aside the gold 3-1/2 inch square for the final assembly.  To make the corner pieces, lay out the squares and triangles as shown to make 4 blocks.  Notice that there are two different layouts and that they are mirror images of each other.  Make 2 of each, paying extra attention to the positions of the hsts.  The golds "kiss" in the center like fun little butterflies.

That's it!  For the final assembly, lay out the corners, side pieces, and the center yellow square as shown:

Stitch the units into rows and then join the rows into the final block.  Press and then stand back and admire your beautiful block!
 

As noted above, this is block number 11!  Just as a reminder, there is one more block for the sides of the quilt, and then in November will be the center medallion block for my quilt.  If you don't want to make the center medallion, you are only 1 block away from a finished quilt! And if anyone has any great ideas for a medallion block, I'd love some suggestions!

Have fun making this beautiful block and come back on October 4 for the 12th Intricate Stitches block!

Sharing at Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, and soscrappy for RSC16.

Just for fun

Hi everyone!  How's your week going?  Mine is insane.  It's time to face the facts--it's not possible to continue with the regularly-scheduled quilty projects and work *and* move at the same time.  It just is beyond the limits of normal humans.  I don't claim to be all that normal, but I did pack up most of my fabric and other sewing things this past weekend.  I had 5 boxes, which seems like a lot to me, since this is such a tiny condo.  I may have a fabric problem.


You know I just had to leave some fabric out to play with.  You know, for stress relief purposes. There's plenty of that around here right now!  So here's what I was playing with earlier:

This is a test block for a quilt I drew up for this thing that's going on on Instagram called 30 days of quilt design.  The idea is that you draw out some thing to do with quilty design for 30 days between now and the end of October.  There are prizes, too, but the exercise is what I'm really interested in.  Rachel at Stitched in Color is running this, and her post about it is HERE.  Go read it for more!

A long way of saying that this is my sketch for this quilt:

Just hsts and squares kind of mixed together.  I called this quilt design "Kissy, kissy" because all of the pieces "kiss" in the center of the block.  The colorful parts here are 8 inches square, so the larger block up at the top of the post is 16 inches square.  A few of those would make a fast quilt!

Alternate layout for the individual blocks.

These were fast, easy, and fun!  And relaxing!  Everything I want sewing to be.  I don't have a pattern or anything, but the hsts are 4-1/2 inches and finish at 4 inches, and the square sections are made up of 2-1/2 inch colorful squares, 2-1/2 inch white squares, and 2-1/2 by 4-1/2 strips.  You can make 2 blocks from 3 charm squares, if you have any matching ones,  Or non-matching!  You could make everything smaller or bigger, too, depending on how fast you'd want that quilt to come together.

Another alternate layout!

 As I said, I was just playing around.  It was relaxing.  I have some more fabric out, but realistically I probably won't get much done this week.  There are more boxes to fill and a husband to keep fed--oh, and students!  Let's not forget them!

One last thing for this post--Bernie at Needle and Foot nominated this little blog for a One Lovely Blog award!  I'll say more about this later, but many, many thanks to Bernie, who has a lovely blog that you should definitely go visit!


Everybody have a great week!  I have a post planned next week for the Intricate Stitches quilt, plus a nice finish post for the week we actually move, so I'll still be around.  And you know that I'll be reading your posts obsessively and living vicariously through you, so be sure to pet some fabric for me!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and Finished or Not Friday.

Life in flux

Hi everyone! How was your week? Life around here has been crazy.  Why did we decide that a good time to move was right at the beginning of a school year, at the end of summer, and during the hottest time of the year?  I guess we are desperate to get out of this condo.

So, this week the only thing I accomplished was to catch up on the Grandma's blocks for one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects.  Here are the blocks in this month's colors:

Definitely grayed tones, which were not helped by the afternoon light.

When I counted my blocks, I discovered that I was 9 blocks behind, so of course I decided to make them all at once.  Why not?  There's nothing else going on, is there?  Here are the 9 that I accomplished this week:

Whoo-hoo, I'm all caught up!  At least for the next 4 days.  Some of those colors are really great, too.  The yellow and coral on the left are my favorites of this batch.

I cut all of these out at once and made them assembly-line style, and it still took me all week.  I am putting things in boxes and doing various other things in between as well.  For some reason, the hubs still wants to eat every day.  Even though I am packing up many of the pots and pans.  Can you imagine?  The nerve!

Just to congratulate myself, I laid many of the blocks out on a bed (sorry for the lumps) just to see what the quilt will look like:

I've been thinking all along that I wouldn't have sashing but would just stitch the blocks and let a secondary pattern come through.  Now I'm wavering.  What do you think?  Also. does anyone have any opinion on any missing colors?  I know we have 2 months to go, and one of those has to be a red, but I need 6 more blocks to finish it up.  Any suggestions?

Everybody have a great weekend.  It's going to be hotter than blazes here, and we'll be packing. When did we get all this stuff?  We also have to shop for appliances, so it looks to be an expensive weekend for us.  I think I may need to have a break with some ice cream or something midway through!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Friday, and soscrappy for RSC16.

Black and white

Hi everyone!  We are back from our visit to our grandson and I already miss him so much!  I'm also missing the cooler weather and the clean air, but not as much as those baby fingers!

Since we travelled this week, I didn't get a lot of sewing time, but I did manage to make up these:

As they used to say--do not adjust your set! A black block and a white block for the postage stamp quilt!  I tried laying out the 16 blocks that I had and decided that I want the quilt to be rectangular and not square, so I need 4 more blocks.

I wasn't planning to make a black block or a white one, because I was afraid that either one would be too dull and would act as a "hole" in the quilt.  I was so wrong!  These two turned out to be a couple of my favorite ones!  There is so much to look at in each of them.  I'm really glad that I went for it.

I swear to you that this block is straight!  The photo lies!

So I still have 2 more blocks to make, which means more sorting, which is frankly the worst part of the whole endeavor.  Don't know what color they'll be, but I want to wrap this up by the end of next week, because we move in 3 weeks!  No tiny pieces left behind!

I have these two little pieces left over.  I couldn't decide if they were black or white, so I left them out of both.  Where would you have put them?

In other news, I have finally joined Instagram!  I wasn't planning to, but there are some fun things happening over there that I want to participate in, so I took the plunge.  Come on over and join me @academicquilter!

Everybody have a wonderful weekend.  I have brought out the boxes and am beginning the task of packing up the condo.  This is a happy thing, right?

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Oh Scrap!