Color Color Color!

Oh boy, do I love color. For my next project, I need contrasting pairs of fabrics. One of the pair needs to be "busy" and "bright". The other one has to be "calm." There has to be a good contrast between the two.

Here are the first four "busy" ones I chose:

And here are the first four "calm" prints. They won't necessarily be paired with the ones above them.

Here are the next eight pairs.

 Here are the last four pairs. Sixteen pairs in all will give me 32 blocks. The finished blocks end up 14", so yeah, this is big. Don't try to shrink this down to 12". It will not work. You'll see why later.

Remember, I'm making a Slashed Squares quilt. Here is the tutorial...

For each color, you'll need three 4-1/2" x 17" strips (this is more than enough, but I would always rather have the strips a bit longer than run out. The strips can't be shorter than 16" but the 4-1/2" is critical. AND you'll need one 7" square. Exactly 7" and square. No wiggle room there.

When fabric was sold 44" wide I could get all of this (with two 7" squares) out of a fat quarter. But now fabric is barely 42" wide, and sometimes you have barely 41" once you remove the selvages.  So now I often cut two 4-1/2" WOF (width of fabric) strips and one 7" square out of each fabric.


NOW! You do not need to make this with new fabric. You can use scraps. Simply sew 4-1/2" wide pieces of fabric around a 7" square, to make a square in a square, like this:

When you get to this stage, the square should measure 15" on each side.

Here's a photo of this pattern made with all yellows. It's the Sunshine quilt I made for my son.

OK! That's enough for today. More fun tomorrow.