Assorted Blocks and Jewel Box

Are you ready? A post without pictures of tomatoes! :D My 3 plants are going great guns, the Goliath has about 18 on it (ping pong to tennis ball sized, but all pretty green yet) the cherry tomato bush has uncountable little ones on it, and the Better Boy has about six, one getting orange.

And what I've been doing quilty lately - First, the top third of the jewel box quilt:



Here's the guild block of the month for July. Instructions on the UCquilts website. I gave everyone that wanted to try it a strip of green fabric for the bottom, then they were to come up with their own flower and stem. This is mine, I traced around a spool for the red posy petals, very simple:


I've been making string blocks for Heartstrings quilts, (link and logo on my sidebar)and I decided to do one using four 7 inch squares of foundation, in 'my' colors. I have a never-ending UFO sampler quilt in brown, green, and cream... and every time I think about it, I'll make another block for it:


Our guild past-president gets blocks from everyone in the guild, as a thanks for being the prez. They choose their own block design and colors - here's her cat block in pink and cream. I liked this one so much, I did one for me in brown, with an extra little triangle of fabric at the tail. I think I'll give my cat a strip of forest green fabric to sit on, and more cream around the edges, till I get it 12½ square - and add it to my sampler block box.


Last, here's Toby, giving his best innocent eyed look. He has a real gift for sitting on the blocks I'm trying to photograph. I'd just chased him off again, but he was obviously not scared enough to run far.

More Heartstrings Designs

They were talking about the busy-ness of the heartstrings blocks over on the Heartstrings Yahoo group pages, and someone mentioned that you could take a completed heartstrings block, match it to a square of plain fabric, stitch it down the middle, and make two blocks - like a half square triangle.

Then they were wondering what kinds of designs you could make with half of a heartstrings block. I couldn't resist. Off to EQ! First I tried a simple little star:


Then rotated the hsts and changed all the blocks to hsts, and changed the color of the triangles to springy green:


You could actually do any block that has half square triangles and/or whole squares for this. The depression block layout looks great too!

Because you lose some of the size when you cut your heartstrings block in half diagonally and re-sew it, it'd make sense to trim your NEW blocks to 8½ inches. If you're mixing whole heartstrings blocks with them, of course they'd have to be trimmed to the same size. This would be a good thing to do with blocks that somehow became too small or got lopsided. Then I added some blocks to my layout and played with making this one in pink:


But all of those blue whole heartstrings blocks I've used around the edges would have to be trimmed, you'd be wasting a lot, trimming an inch off them, unless you made some smaller ones on purpose. Better not use many whole blocks, I thought. Then I came up with these designs that don't use as many whole heartstrings blocks, just 4 in the center. First one with a denim colored half block:


Then my favorite, some turquoise:


And finally, one in navy blue:


Which layout should I try first?

434

I was going to just post the number... 434, and get back to sewing, but I'd been showing people at work the EQ pattern I put up way back in December, and got tired of having to go back in the archives to show the bright scrappy one, and explaining that the version Mom had decided on would be done less colorful, only in blues and beiges.

So, here's a blue-toned EQ version of where all 576 (if I ever get done with them) half square triangles will end up:



I've also got one kaleidoscope block done, and ten more cut out. Back to sewing!

More Choices

Went to Blockbase today, and dug around for more blocks that would look good next to a 16 patch Depression block. I did find the one I used this morning, it was called "Colorado Star" when it was first published. Then I found two more:


Then I used EQ again to make a quilt that used all the blocks I liked so far... so I could compare them next to each other.


On the top third, the regular star, on the middle third, the electric fan block, and on the bottom third, the pieced star. The electric fan is not really a 16 patch block, but I DO like the curves that it makes around the depression block. Now my problem is, which do I choose?