Making a Start

Today I went to buy some material for my Quilt A-Long project and let me tell you, it's never easy for me. I stand there, staring at all the material and I just can't decide. I don't know why, but I always seem to gravitate towards the solid colours.

I decided that I must try some of the printed material and it was like trying to pull my teeth without an anesthetic. Not that the printed fabrics were ugly, just really hard to make any decision on them.

Anyway, I finally have my 5 fabrics for the blocks.

I made myself a drawing of the block and wrote onto it where I wanted what colour. So in other words - make yourself a key that you can refer back to at a glance.

The blocks will be 9" x 9" finished with a sashing around each block of 3" x 9" and a corner block of 3" x 3"

 For my "small-ish" quilt I'm making 3 rows of 3 blocks (9).


Cutting:

For one block -

Fabric 1 - cut 1 block 5.5" x 5.5"
Fabric 2 - cut 2 blocks 4" x 4"  cut these diagonally once to get 4 triangles
Fabric 3 - cut 2 blocks 5.5" x 5.5"  cut these diagonally once to get 4 triangles

For the sashing and corner squares around one block -

Fabric 4 - cut 4 blocks 9.5" x 3.5"
Fabric 2 - cut 16 blocks 2.5" x 5.5"

Fabric 5 - cut 4 blocks 3.5" x 3.5"
Fabric 1 - cut 16 blocks 2" x 2"

Depending on how many blocks you need to make, you need to work out the measurements for the amount of fabric you will buy.

These are the two sets of squares that need to be cut diagonally once







In South Africa we work with the metric system and most of quilting is written or spoken about in inches which I had no clue about. What I done was get myself a cutting mat that had inches measured out on one side and centimeters on the other and saved myself a nightmare in trying to convert every instruction I ever read.

Layout:

I laid out the middle square before I sewed it together so that I would get a better idea of what I needed to do.

All seams are 1/4"





This is the finished block without the sashing (9.5" x9.5")

Yay! one down, now make another 8.





That's it for today.

JvN