QAF Block of the Month

January 2009

COLORS!!!

5" (unfinished), 4 1/2"(finished) (to be joined later into 9" finished blocks)

Your Block of the Month for January is SIMPLE! It's about COLOR! And most of all, it is an exercise in VALUE! And, you probably can make these in minutes from your stash! How do you like that for a beginning?

We are doing the very simple Half Square Triangle. You will be making 4 HST for each entry, which can then be sewn together into resulting 9" finished blocks by the winner.

I have shown these in Kaffe Fassett prints, simply to make it easy.......but you may use any color-rich prints. They should not have more than a dab of white or cream in them, and no light pastels. Darks, mediums, or a medium-light will work best for these blocks. And don't get worried about which colors are next to other colors..they should all work with these types of fabrics, the value differences are what will be important for these blocks.

Our goal here is to learn something about the 'value' of VALUE. Notice how the same fabric can be the lighter one of the two OR the darker one of the two, depending on the fabric you pair it with. Notice how the settings below demonstrate how value rather than color decides the design of the quilt. I did pick a few lighter pastels for my sample quilts, and you can see they work right along with all the medium values to define the pattern in the quilts. But all light fabrics paired with the darks would be too much, or at least would result in an entirely different type of quilt. These WILL make scrappy quilts, there is no doubt of that!

CUT for each ENTRY:

To Assemble Blocks:

Make Half Square Triangles (HST): Mark a diagonal line from corner to corner on the back of each lighter square. Place each lighter square on top of its darker partner and stitch 1/4" on each side of the drawn line. Cut apart on the drawn line, press seam allowances to the darker fabric. Now square up each pieced square to exactly 5" square, lining up the diagonal sewn line with the diagonal line on your ruler.

You have just made 2 pair of HST, and that equals one entry in the BOM, (4 HST). You may make up to 3 'entries' or 12 HST to enter.

Here are a couple of simple quilt layouts, as mentioned above: