::The Time Has Come::

Ok Friends.  The moment you have been waiting for is here.  I know I’m a day late and a dollar short, all due to working at this FABULOUS store.

Hope you have cut yourself some squares!  I went a little crazy.

This week we’ll pair up our squares and sew them.  Then cut them into their new blocks.

DETERMINING VALUE:

No worries on making fabrics match, we’re going to think in values, or the degree of lightness or darkness of a color.

Cut your fabric squares. I used 6-inch squares, but you may go smaller or larger.

Divide them in piles into light, medium and dark. Like below:

You have a ton of Mediums you say? Our eyes tend to like Mediums. Most likely your stash is made up largely of this value.

You won’t immediately know into which pile to place some fabrics. The questionable squares will be sorted out in the next step. One will always be lighter.

PAIRING UP SQUARES:

Now you need to pair TWO squares.

Pull a square from one of the Light, Medium or Dark piles and match it RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER with another value, until you have one big stack.

This is an easy way to weed out the questionable (is it Light, Medium or Dark?) valued squares, by mating what you have left.

Remember, value is relative.  When you hold those last stragglers up to each other, one will ALWAYS be lighter.  You might have to rematch a few to pair all your squares.

Each pair will now need a line drawn diagonally from one corner to another on the wrong side of the mated pair. Pencil is the recommended method, but I use pen, make your own calls on this.

SEWING SQUARES:

Sew a quarter inch seam on each side of that line.  I don’t pin, but you might want to if your blocks aren’t staying square. I chain piece when I do this step.  If you need some photos of this and the pinning, Stitches In Place does a fabulous job.

With your rotary cutter and ruler, cut on the penned line to make two blocks.

If you get a moment, I would love to see what you’re up to!  Our Flickr group is HERE.  I really wanted to include discharged blocks as my light, but time didn’t allow…would love to see this if someone has the time and motivation!

I decided with everything going on that I wasn’t going to reinvent the wheel. All text and photos have already been done, so if you care to skip ahead because you have time, the whole process is HERE.

I am so excited to have a weekend with my family.  We are super busy tomorrow, but Sunday I hope to fit in football, beer and sewing.  Have a productive week you all!  I’ve really enjoyed the emails.