Daisy Chain QAL {Unit C}

Update 8/11/2020 -- This pattern is now available in our Etsy and Payhip shops. Please visit one of those sites to purchase the full pattern.

No April Fool's Day jokes here, ladies and gents -- just QAL fun!

This week we are NOT making four patches -- we are making a member of the quarter-square triangle (QST) family that I call a ribbon block. We’ll only be using our focal fabric and background fabric this week. These units will need to be trimmed but should be quick and easy to sew together!

My baby size quilt has the orange floral print for my focal fabric. 

My second quilt has a single aqua batik for my ribbon block units. I managed to remember to take some in-progress pictures of these units before pressing, before trimming, and after trimming.

Let's see some of the QST units made by YOU!
-- Michelle also has aqua QSTs.
-- Stephanie's Halloween themed quilt is taking shape!
-- Gail is working on trimming her blue floral QSTs.
-- Christina has floral QSTs in progress.
-- Kate used a gorgeous paisley in her QST units!

Schedule

Fabric Requirements - February 4th

Cutting - February 18th

Block Units- March 4th

Block Units - March 18th

Block Units - April 1st <--- That's today!

Block Units - April 15th

Catch up week link up - April 29th

Top Construction Part 1 - May 6th

Top Construction Part 2 - May 20th

Link up/giveaways/quilt parade starts: June 3rd

Link up/giveaways/quilt parade ends: June 17th

Scrappy Christmas {New Project}

I resisted as long as I was able! My husband bought me Bonnie Hunter's Addicted to Scraps book for my birthday last June, had I had yet to start a project from it. In cleaning and sorting my scraps following our move, I decided that I wanted to make my own version of the Jingle Bell Square quilt from that book.

As the name suggests, the quilt is a scrappy Christmas quilt. I have a number of different Christmas quilts but I don't have one big enough for my bed.

Without going into block construction too much, the quilt requires red blocks and green blocks. I cut some of the parts using my Accuquilt Go! cutter and dies. I decided that I would make small batches of blocks.

In my first batch of blocks, I ended up with five full blocks -- three red and two green -- and some block parts sewn and set aside for future blocks.

Making these blocks is NOT fast. I am a person that prefers to make HSTs and QSTs that I can trim to the correct size so making the smaller size of QSTs for these blocks take a while to make and trim. However, unlike my Double Delight quilt that was last spring's scrap project, it makes more sense to make each block one at a time rather than to make all of the units step by step. Well, I guess it makes sense in my head, since it makes it easier to start and stop on this project.

Sharing at Oh Scrap!

QST progress and block building

Since I got both sets of my HSTs done for my Romantic Garden quilt done (YAY!), this weekend was the time to start working on getting my QSTs (at least the first set of them!) built.

I had gotten the pairs sewn together the same time as all of my HSTs and got them cut apart. I didn't trim just yet so I had as much wiggle room as possible to properly center the "X" of the QST block.

When I make QSTs, I do not cut corner to corner -- if you do this, you might end up with triangles that aren't right angles at the center! I make sure to cut perpendicularly to the seam and align it with as close to the opposite corners as possible without distorting the cut from being perpendicular to the seam.

Here's all of my QSTs pressed but before trimming.

I trimmed all of these while watching baseball on Sunday. One of the nice things about HSTs vs. QSTs is that at least some of the time you can get away with only trimming two of the sides if you have one "square" side to start. With QSTs you have to trim all of the sides and worry about making sure that your block center stays in the center once it's trimmed.

I don't have a 3 inch square ruler to easily trim, but I was able to line up the center of the block with an "intersection" on the ruler and then line up the diagonal of the QST with the diagonal of the ruler. And ta da --- 52 QSTs!

I went ahead and cut the 3 inch squares for the rest of block A (this is a two block quilt) and laid out one entire block to see how it will look.

I think it looks a little bit like a four leaf clover in the center with the dark greens. Now to sew all of them together!

Linking up at Linky Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, Let's Bee Social, and WIP Wednesday!

Don't forget that we are nearing the end of our Row Quilt QAL! There's still plenty of time to participate!