Monday, September 20, 2010

quilt blocks, quilt blocks and more quilt blocks!

remember how i mentioned the quilt blocks i made for examples of the september challenge for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild?

i can show you now!

if you've been following my blog for a while, you might have realized that i freaking LOVE halloween! i jokingly say that i've never grown out of my goth phase, but honey, it's so true.

for the september challenge, we decided to do halloween blocks. we wanted to have something consistent between them, but didn't want to limit people too much, so we decided that all the blocks had to use kona black in them.

since we already have two projects on the go with challenge blocks, we decided that these ones should go home with folks, so we're going to use them for a draw. for every 10 blocks entered, there'll be a winner, and each block you bring will count as an entry. so if 50 blocks show up, there will be 5 winners of 10 blocks each!

a smaller size block was suggested, so that they could be used for wall hangings, table runners, etc if people wanted to whip something up between the next quilt meeting on october 21st and halloween itself, so the blocks need to be 6.5" square (6" finished size).

i went a little bit overboard making samples for the guild meeting - i just couldn't resist! i went looking for halloween fabric, because goodness knows, i didn't have nearly enough already, and ran across a really cute line, Seen On Halloween, by Maywood Studio at a local shop. i'm also totally enamoured with Eerie Alley, by SEI for Robert Kaufman, but i haven't seen them anywhere locally. i'm waiting for payday to snatch some up!

but anyway, back to the blocks!
(i'm posting them smaller than usual, cause there's a lot of them... click on them to see them bigger on flickr! the fabric lines are listed on the flickr photos too!)

window box blocks
i love the green spiders!
window block

i did 3 of these, just to show how you could use some of the cute panel fabrics available
window block
window block
window block

a bunch of fun pinwheel and whirlwind blocks -
pinwheel
pinwheel
pinwheel
pinwheel
and i know, the last one doesn't use Kona - bad example! i got carried away...)

a log cabin block, cause i love those...
log cabin

a square within a square block
square in a square

a few random ones
IMG_8829
IMG_8824

and the star of the show, a purple paper pieced owl!
purple peeping owl
(pattern by Artisania!)


i had a bit of a struggle resizing the block designs to fit the 6.5" requirement, and i had no idea that there are actually computer programs that can do that for you! for that matter, it didn't even occur to me to google 6.5" block patterns, i was so impatient to get started. duh!

however, since i DID do all the work, i thought i'd share so you wouldn't have to do it yourself.

for the window box block, cut a 5" square of fabric A, a 2" square of fabric B, and two black rectangles 2"x5"

for the square in a square block
cut a 2.75" square of the centre fabric
cut a 2.75" square, a 2.75"x2" rectangle, a 2"x6.5" rectangle, and a 2.75"x6.5" rectangle of the outer fabric

for the pinwheel block
black fabric: cut 2 squares 3 7/8" and cut them as below
half triangles righthalf triangles left
black fabric: cut one square 4.25" and cut as below
quarter triangles
print fabric: cut one square 4.25" and cut as below
quarter triangles

whirlwind block
print fabric 1: cut two 3 7/8" squares and cut as below
half triangles righthalf triangles left
print fabric 2: cut a 4.25" square and cut as below
quarter triangles
black fabric: same as print fabric 2

and the log cabin block
cut a 2.5" centre square, and 1.5" strips



and other than halloween, i also finished my 3rd 12.5"x12.5" wonky monkey block, from july's challenge
monkey block 3
this one's my favourite of the 3!



i didn't have time before the meeting to finish the flying geese block, or make anything cool with the scraps, but oh well. i was more excited about the halloween fabric!

4 comments:

* said...

These are cute and look easy and fun to do.
Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Yay! You did a fabulous job with all of your block samples. Thanks for the linky love my dearie :) Oh, the horse pattern has now taken over the sale...but I have 4 fun halloween patterns coming this friday!

amy dame said...

thanks kym! they are super easy and fun to do, go for it!

thanks sonja! i got mixed up re: the sale, i'll edit that. i'm sooooo impatient for the halloween patterns!

trudys_person said...

Great selection of blocks! I got a couple of them in the group I won - yay!

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