Disappearing Blocks

Fellow Quilters,

My Stay-at-Home-and-Cruise continues as I cruise from the living room to the sewing room instead of spending the day in the Azores.  The cocktail du jour yesterday was a Very Berry Martini. Made with muddled blueberries, it was colorful and tasty.

Our Very Berry martinis complement my hydrangea

After dinner Hubby and I watched a movie on Netflix called Contagion, released in 2011, depicting the outbreak of a novel virus.  It probably seemed far-fetched at the time.  So much of the movie parallels our current situation.  Just saying.

We are in the home stretch of the Time to Quilt quilt-along, with just 5 days to go.  I think Northcott has prepared some quilt finishing options, and I will see if I can squeeze in some time this week between pattern writing and magazine submissions to come up a few options as well.

I mentioned yesterday that I have a great hack for Block 20 so let’s get to it.  When I looked at this block I saw something other than 4 quadrants with small squares and short strips.  I saw Block 15 cut into 4 quadrants, and I thought I’d rather sew longer strips onto a larger square and just do it once for each positive and negative block.

Slightly modified Block 15 cut into quadrants to make Block 20

Now, this works because we are doing a positive and negative block, because we need 2 quarters from each to make our finished blocks.

Today’s tip:  If your fabrics are non-directional, you can move your quadrants around so that you don’t have the seams abutting each other.  If your fabrics are directional, press the final seams on the block with the lighter fabric as the outer strip, toward the block center – by doing this, your seams will off-set each other (see the arrows in the diagram below).

If you have directional fabric use the diagram on the left. For non-directional fabric arrange quadrants to offset seams as shown on right.

As I was rearranging my quadrants I found another fun arrangement for this block – it looks like diagonal chains!  So many options.

Playing with my super-size Shimmer quadrants

Now it just so happens that I was flipping through the latest (May/June) issue of Love of Quilting magazine yesterday and saw a similar quilt, Next Steps, by Mary Ann Castrogivanni, created by cutting Courthouse Steps blocks in quadrants. In fact this issue has several quilts created by cutting blocks apart and reassembling them, and a Magic Block Show with a myriad of ideas for “disappearing” blocks, made by cutting easy blocks in sections to create complex blocks easily.

Once I finished rearranging my quadrants my blocks went together quickly.

Block 20 done 🙂

You can find my instructions for Block 20 here.

Northcott is showing the gorgeous Shimmer black earth in the block today and Banyan has used Intaglio for their block.  Christina continues to make her rainbow blocks with Lucky Charms and is showing Block 20 in Book Club as well (the book mark print is adorable).  And have you checked out what my friend Daphne did on her blog today with this block?

I’m off to make Block 21 now.  See you tomorrow 😊

Patti