Proof of Concept- Part 2

 If you made last week's blocks, or if you are thinking about it, and you want to know what the rest of the story is before you commit, here it is!

Before I show you, I want to let you in on a secret. If your quilt only has one block, what size they finish at doesn't matter. What does matter, is that they are all the same size! 

Last week's big block measured 18" finished, made up of four 9" finished block quarters. Today we'll be using those bonus HST's to make a different quilt. Now, when I used the specialty ruler for the sew and flip corners, I did not trim up the bonus HST's, I simply sewed a 1/4" seam on the diagonal. Each of these bonus HST's are a block quarter for our new quilt. You'll get two block quarters for quilt two, from each block quarter from block one. Remember we did two sew and flip corners on each block quarter? That really comes into play here, because out new blocks will be smaller than last week's, but you'll get two of them for each big block from last week.

And our new block is....

Four bonus HST's give you this block, and mine is measuring 10 7/8 unfinished. so it will be 10 3/8 finished. Is it a weird size? Yes, it is. Do I care? No I don't, because all my blocks measure this, and I'm not adding any other units to the quilt. 

How do a bunch of these look together?

It's a completely different look compared to the last quilt, but I still like it quite well. You can turn the blocks quarters differently to make a different block, and you can in the first quilt as well, but I liked the versions I did best. Both of these are now sewn into quilt tops and I'm not adding borders, I think a good contrasting binding will be a fine finish. 

It did not take me long to make both of these quilt tops. If you need two quilts in a hurry, this would be a good option. Although I think it could work in a lot of fabric combinations, the fact it looks good in men's shirts made me think this would be a great way to make two memory quilts from a loved ones clothes. You don't need a lot of extra fabric, and you get two quilt tops fast. Quilt #1 is larger, but not by a huge amount.

The only fabric waste is the dog ears from the bonus HST's. 

Will I try it in novelty prints? Maybe, but because the blocks get turned directional fabrics could be tricky, also, you'd really have to watch scale of the prints because not all the pieces end up being large. 

I think the next time I play around with this idea, I'm going to go much smaller, so there are a lot more repeats over the surface of the quilt. Changing the width of the framing strips will also change the quilts pretty drastically. I have some neon green fabric, and lot of black and white prints. What if I used the green for the framing strips and the black and white fabrics for the squares????

There's my concept and the resulting blocks on the design wall. It's probably been done before by someone, but not that I've seen. I did figure out how to make quilt #1 without bonus HST's, so there would be no quilt #2, but by doing it this way, the cutting is really easy, the sewing is easy, and you get an extra quilt. That's a huge win in my book!