Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Skill Builder Blocks 28, 29, 30 Odd Shapes

This month we focused on making odd shapes.  And continued using skills we'd already learned - sewing curves, triangles and template work.   

28, 29, 30

The first block was tumblers.  I love the look but it took me a few tries before I got the hang of how to sew them straight.  This is a design I would probably use on a much larger scale one I buy a plastic template.  The one I made out of card stock definitely got shaved down smaller and smaller the more I cut!  There's a pretty noticeable difference between the pieces I but first and the ones I cut last.
Originally, I wanted to do a completely random arrangement.  But after fiddling around with the tumblers for about a half an hour, I realized I would just have to make a design.  Random wouldn't work for me!

I also LOVE the look of apple cores.  I think entire apple core quilts are amazing.  I thought, if this block goes well, I have a future quilt idea.  sigh.  The thing I DON'T love about apple cores is because of the curves, cutting them out with my rotary cutter is out of the question.  And I don't have a cricut or any other such cutting machine so that left me with scissors.  After cutting 9 apple cores for a 12in block, I had definitely decided I was not adding an apple core quilt to my future quilt idea list ANY time soon.
In my always present thought of keeping the main fabric MAIN, I decided to make it  the corner fabric instead of the center. I didn't want the main green to be the border.
 This Equilateral Triangle Block was SUPER fast to sew together.  The longest thing was cutting out all the triangles.  And AGAIN my cardstock template ended up smaller than I started.  A would make a triangle quilt like this with a plastic template.  It definitely sews together really quickly.
I cut 6 of the main green triangles and the other greens (excluding the solid mint) only had two.  I accidentally flipped the top half and bottom half when I sewed them together, but it wasn't a mistake I wanted to fix.  It didn't really mess anything up, just changed my design

I really like working with all this fabric now.  Which is such a change from when it first arrived.  It's also fun to see 3 blocks a month added to the design wall.

Also Leila, who hosts the Skill Builder Sampler tutorial on her blog, does a random giveaway of fabric for everyone that finishes the 3 blog set on time.  The longer the series goes, the fewer people complete the blocks.  Sooner or later, I'm going to be a random winner.  I just know it.  ;-)

1 comment:

TL said...

very niiiice!