Batiks Gone Modern {Making Wonky Crosses In Bulk}

It's time for Batiks Gone Modern, Episode 2: Attack of the Wonky Crosses!

To recap, I'm making a abstract Mount Everest out of wonky crosses, using 5 shades of purple batiks.

First the winner of my batik giveaway:

Congrats, Rachel! A fun bundle of your favorite colors will be on its way to you soon!

Today I'm going to talk about my process of making wonky cross blocks in bulk. I will preface this post with the disclaimer that I am not the wonky-est blogger on the block. I think that most people will tend to call my blocks "controlled wonky" but this is who I am as a person. I'm also slightly limited because of the small size of my cross blocks -- these will finish at 3 inches square, which is the same size as a Post-It note, for scale.

Now onto the sewing!

For the purposes of this tutorial, I'm going to be working with fabrics #3 and #4. For these blocks my darker fabric will always be my "cross" and the lighter fabric is the background.

To make approximately 6 blocks, cut the following
1 - 3.5 inches x 22 inch (half width of fabric) rectangle of your background fabric
2 - 1.5 inches x WOF strip of your cross fabric -- cut one strip in half

Lay your 3.5 inch x 20 inch rectangle on your cutting mat. Using a long ruler, cut a diagonal cut lengthwise through the rectangle, creating two halves. The start and end of your cut should be at least 1 inch from the corner so that your cross doesn't end up too close to the edge of the block (which I learned the hard way!)

Sew both halves of the background fabric to your shorter 1.5 inch strip, pressing toward your darker fabric, aware of potential stretch along the bias.

Measure the length of your new unit, and cut 5 or 6 sections of equal width. For mine, my piece was 22.25 inches long so I cut sections 3.75 inches wide. You do not need to worry a lot about the "rough ends" since we'll be trimming our blocks at the end!

At this point, you can slice your block in half in any direction of your choice to create the space for the second half of your cross. I varied the angle at which my second piece crossed the first piece. I sewed all of my first half of each block to the same 1.5 inch strip, then cut the strip apart and pressed. I then added the second half of each block and pressed.

Now it's time to trim all of our blocks to our desired size - 3.5 inches. You can also use this step to vary the angles of your crosses within the blocks. Most of my untrimmed blocks were about 4 inches square so I had some wiggle room in determining how I wanted my final blocks to look.

And we just made 6 wonky cross blocks and saved a little bit of time by being able to strip piece and chain piece our blocks (at least part of the time!)

For this project, I made a total of 59 wonky cross units in four different fabric pairs for my ombre Everest:
16 - dark dot print fabric + dark tonal
16 - dark tonal + medium tonal
12 - medium tonal + medium burst print (shown above)
15 - medium burst print + light tonal

Next week, I'll be posting about putting the top together and the final product! I've already planned my quilting idea out and am excited to see if it will work or not!

Sharing at Tips and Tutorials Tuesday at Quilting Jet Girl, Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, and NTT at My Quilt Infatuation!

Sharing at Show Me Something {Purple} at Sarah Goer Quilts for January 2020!