Thursday 5 January 2012

It's a Craftsy Start

After my last post I suddenly remembered I had some lovely Tilda fabrics I'd bought on a trip to Scarborough and Whitby last year which would be prefect for the Craftsy BOM project. Luckily I had found them during a quick tidying session in my sewing room so knew exactly where they were and could get started straight away.
This month the two blocks are the Asterisk and what Amy calls a Pound Sign. They are both made by cutting a 12" square of fabric then  cutting the square in two pieces, adding a strip then repeating the process to insert several strips. Here are larger pictures of both blocks:

These are quick and easy to sew as long as you're as idiotic as me and sew one of the strips on the wrong side as I did! My hint is when you cut across the pound sign block mark each cut edge with a pin so you don't forget where to rejoin the pieces! The only slight problem I had was that the pound sign block came out a touch small so next time I will cut the beginning square a little larger the 12". Both blocks are trimmed after completion so a little extra wouldn't hurt.
I love these fabrics - particularly the green with the pink roses and I'm not usually a flowery person at all! I've a couple of metres of the spotty fabric so will use that in most blocks and hopefully for borders or sashing. The rest are fat quarters:

and I probably need to buy a few more as there are twenty blocks to make. 
You can sign up for this free course with video tutorials as well as printed instruction on the Craftsy website. It's FREE so what are you waiting for?
I made an asterisk block when my friend Janet Bottomley came to lead a workshop on Liberated Piecing for my group and Janet showed us how effective striped fabric is in this block. Here is Janet's version:
 And here are the blocks everyone made that day:
These ones were 6" finished and look so effective grouped together.
I've also admired the second block before in a quilt designed by Lynn Edwards:
 Some of the blocks are made by stacking nine fabrics before cutting and rearranging to make blocks with a section of fabrics. It's from this book:
Oh no! I haven't time to get side tracked - I have far too many other projects to get on with!
Happy Stitchin!
Hazel x

4 comments:

  1. I just signed up for the free BOM. thanks for the great tips

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  2. I just signed up too! I'm excited to get started and love seeing some of your blocks here :)

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  3. As a non patchworker, I love those blocks and I am beginning to think that making "art quilts" when you don't know the basics is a bit of a tall order. So I'm going to sign up to!!! Thank's for the inspiration Hazel!

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  4. I *loooooove* that green floral fabric! Your blocks look awesome :)

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