Teeny-Tiny!

Itsy-Bistsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Half Square Triangles!

This week has been my personal quilting retreat in Michigan (again).   I spent my last few days at home cutting the basic pieces for 6 weeks' worth of Barrister's Blocks.  The blocks are 6-1/2" unfinished, and the units are getting tinier as the Sow-Along progresses.  (I was a good girl and completed 10 blocks for the Otsego Lake quilts before I started on these).

Sorry for some of the blurry photos.  Cell phone vs. camera.  You understand.

Chained Star

I bought some seam guides at the quilt store in town.  I've tried tape, moleskin, whatever, without noticeable improvement in my seam accuracy.  But these little guys do help.  Count 'em up -- the four-patches are composed of 1" squares (finished).

I'm not thrilled with the yellow/brown squares that march up from the lower left, but the seams and points came out great.

Tic Tac Toe

The finished squares and HSTs in this block are also just 1".  The block was going great -- until I sliced the HSTs for the final corners of the Monkey Wrench unit the wrong way.  Oops!  Now I'll have to finish this one when I get home.

Gentleman's Fancy

I love this block, plus we were instructed to make the Flying Geese using a different method that I'd tried before.

I cut rectangles from the yellow, then sewed the light squares along the diagonals and trimmed them off.



This method seemed to give me better results than what I usually do (sew 2 squares on the diagonal onto a larger square).  Maybe it was just luck.









Unlike the 3-squares method, this one left me with some small triangles that just cried out be be made into HST units.  I didn't think too much about how useful they would be until after I sewed and pressed them. 














The HSTs came out well, too -- when I squared them up, the only trimmings were the dog-ears.

But tiny!  Oh, my!  1-1/4" unfinished -- that'll be 3/4" after they're sewn.  I have NO idea what to do with them.  Barbie quilt?!?  Postage-stamp quilt?  TBD.

Carrie Nation

All squares, and strip-pieced to boot.  Hallelujah!  Usually we are told to cut squares of whatever size and go from there.  This time we cut strips, sewed the strips together, and then cross-cut them.  The small finished squares are 3/4".   Hmm, that gives me an idea for those little yellow-and-white units!

These fabrics were a real find.  I got them in the little LQS in downtown Gaylord, one of those stuff-a-bag deals.  I like the different kinds of leaves, and the contrast between the warm brown/pick squares and the cool background fabric.

Mosaic

For whatever it's worth, the block that I'm using for the Otsego Lake bed quilts is also called Mosaic, and it looks nothing like this.  It would be nice to have some kind of pattern-recognition software that could identify a block pattern and tell you all the different names it goes by!

This block is OK technically, but the colors just don't work.  Everything looks just, well, medium.  Blah.  Part of it is the photograph, a bit overexposed.  But the floral does nothing and the blue should be stronger.  IMHO.  But I probably won't re-make it unless it looks totally horrible when it's time to assemble the final quilt.

Darting Bird

This was more fun to make than I'd expected -- a nice way to use several fabrics without being completely scrappy.

This coming weekend is a big quilt show right across the lake.  Guess where I'll be?!?