With just a little extra effort…
I found a block I liked in the Ladies Art Company Block
Tool, Mosaic no. 18, which I decided to adapt to a technique I learned from
Bonnie Hunter. The units for the block
are parallelograms that are easily made with a rectangle and two squares. The squares get a diagonal line marked from
point to point with a mechanical pencil and if the little extra effort is made
to mark another line 3/8” from the first, you can sew both seams, cut down the
middle of the two seams and have a bonus half square triangle.
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| 2 diagonal lines drawn on each square with mechanical pencil |
The size of the quilt the Scrappy Spinner blocks will make
netted me over 1000 bonus blocks that are 2” unfinished, and can be used in another project.
I knew from a class I took with Bonnie about
adding the second line and the bonus blocks from that class, Pineapple Blossom,
were used in the border of that quilt. What I didn’t realize was how useful the
little bonus half square triangle could be because it combines well with a 2”
piece of fabric. In my short sightedness, I have never really used a pattern
that had 2” strips as the size to work with because I had 2 ½” strips available
by the gazillions.
Recently I was gifted a box of scraps that when combined
with the tub of scraps I already had waiting to be utilized became TWO tubs of
scraps. I promptly bought a Go Cutter
and Laura has been working her way through the scraps, one color at a time,
cutting them into useful things. The
most useful things at the moment are 2 ½” x 4 ½” rectangles and 2 ½” squares. Emily has been cutting what won’t work on the
two die sizes into strips that are 1 ½” or 2” or into squares of the same
size. All are getting sorted, stacked,
organized and thought about. Some are
even getting used!
Because I was excited to start this project and the only two
colors that had been cut up were the red and green, I decided I was making a
red and green scrappy quilt. The sample
block I made looked pretty cool, but blah, so I made another sample and on one end
of the red rectangles, I sewed yellow on the diagonal which as a block will
become little yellow pinwheels set off by the red. The green units will go beside the red units,
but all other diagonal pieces were just random scrappy colors that were NOT
red, green or yellow.
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| red units with yellow for corner |
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| chain piecing squares to rectangles |
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| Red units done, green waiting patiently |
Today’s little teaser is seeing the quilt pieces in a
box
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| all units ready and waiting! |
…all red and green units are ready for me to pair them, sew them into units
that will then be made into blocks from 4 pairs of red and green units; 63
blocks in all. I am still blown away by
the number of bonus half square triangles.
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| bag of bonus blocks waiting to be pressed |
Stay tuned!
