It’s Friday, so time for block 4 of Project 48! I read the instructions over for the first time over my morning coffee, and although I initially loved the look of the block I didn’t like how much fabric it wasted if you were only doing one block. It would be fine if you were doing a whole quilt; I can imagine 4 shades of kona in each block in a couple of colours – fabulous! But for one block. . .hmm. I had friends visiting in the morning, so ideas were bubbling away until I could get to my fabric.
For some reason I thought cutting a single piece of fabric in stripes then rearranging them would work. Luckily I tested it out with paper first. It didn’t work as I wanted it to.
So I cut out a paper template and did lots of stash diving. For some reason the red with yellow striped fabric had come into my mind immediately for this project, and I found that if I played around I had more than enough to do half of the centre with it.
I chose another red fabric – with droplets, a very appropriate celebration of today’s rain – as the other fabric in the centre.
I played with the placement for the coloured pieces. NO, those stripes would drive me insane like this.
Much better.
There’s still a lot of wastage on this block. The centre needed to be trimmed down to 5 1/2 inches; mine started as 6 1/2.
I marked the small squares, then sewed them to their strips. I sewed on the ‘outside’ side of the line to help compensate for the thickness of the thread and fabric when pressed. I had to use my normal foot instead of the 1/4 inch foot for this step.
More trimming/wastage – although these are quite small corners. If they were larger I would have sewed another seam parallel to the one needed for the pattern – then when you trim you have a HST to use on another project.
Cutting and trimming complete!
Ahhh – finally I see why this is part of the 9 patch month.
Block 4 of 48! As a larger quilt, I think this block would be fun. I’ll keep it in mind. With lots of shades of kona colours, a bit of a production line, and perhaps not having to make someone 5,000 pieces of Vegemite while making it and it could go quite well.
Blocks 1 through 4 of 48:
