Red Onion Class

I've signed up to take a class at retreat based on a quilt from the book 'Stack a New Deck' by Karla Alexander that I showed you all earlier. The class is using the Red Onion pattern, and I'm also looking at a very similar pattern called Saturn. I might mix the two almost identical quarter curve blocks in one quilt, because, as usual, I want something different. Instead of 12 inch blocks like her book called for, I'm being fat quarter friendly and using 10½ square blocks.

I've also seen lots of pink and brown quilts being blogged about lately, so that's what I picked as the color scheme for this one ... I'm hoping all the curved lines will make it look like a box of chocolate creams, the pinks like raspberry nougat, the deeper pink like a chocolate covered cherry, and the tan blobs like nuts or caramel. :) Here's the fabric palette I'm using. I've cut 48 blocks to use:



I've really got a thing about wasting fabric and trimming large amounts, so I made 4 test blocks to see how the smaller 10½ square blocks would trim up. I was able to trim these, with 3 cuts and 3 seams, to 9 inches square... her instructions say start with a 12 inch block and trim to 9 inches. Of course, some of my trims were skimpy, but I'd much rather cut off just a sliver than a chunk an inch or more wide. If I can't get them all 9 inches, I'll retrim these first sample ones another ½ inch or so. Some of my blocks will have only 2 cuts and two seams... and I might even make some with only one cut, so with less seams, I shouldn't have any trouble squaring those to 9 inches.



Hopefully, the next post you see from me will be the finished top for this quilt!