Welcome to the Quiltmaker 100 Block Blog Tour.  Although we had a block in the magazine we almost missed out on the tour. For those of you who don’t know I was recently diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  Sometime in the last couple months an email must have come telling us about the tour and I must not have seen it…so didn’t sign up for it.  Then earlier this week I started wondering why I hadn’t heard anything about it only to find out it was starting.  Luckily the gals at Quiltmaker squeezed us in.

Here’s our block:

This was designed by me on one of those days I was in a hurry racing a deadline…loosely translated I forgot all about submitting something and the deadline was the next day.  Well coming up with an “original block” isn’t always easy.  Before we’ve thought we had something only to page through a quilt block book and see what we thought was an “original block” as something that was “original” 100 years ago!  Then we’d be back at he drawing board.

I told Kelli we didn’t have time to mess around and whatever we came up with had to “be original” the first time…no second tries this time around.  I told her our best bet was to string piece at least part of the block.

Although the directions in Quiltmaker’s 100 Block issue tell you to paper piece the star points, we actually didn’t.  We did it like this….

I started out with 4 1/2″ and 3 1/2″ squares.

I put the 3 1/2″ square onto the fabric and sewed on the diagonal  Then sewed 3/8″ for that line.  I like having bonus triangles…Then I trimmed the corner off between the two sewn lines.

I pressed to get one bonus triangle and the start of my star points.

I did the same for the next side.

I pressed and my blocks now look like this.  I ended up with bonus pieces again…but forgot them in the photo.

Next I graduated down a size.  I put 2 1/2″ squares on the corners and sewed twice along the diagonal as shown.

I did it to both sides and pressed.  I ended up with this and the bonus triangles.

Next I graduated down a size.  I put 1 1/2″ squares on the corners and sewed ONCE along the diagonal as shown.  Then I trimmed.

That’s how I got my star points.  To create my star blocks.  How cool is that??  It looks like paper piecing but doesn’t have to be.

Right now I am working on a baby quilt.  This is how far I currently am…three stars in on the 16 stars I am going to make.  Right now, plans are that the bonus triangles I get from sewing the 2 1/2″ blocks on will be pressed and sewn together.  They will make a “sashing” between the blocks.

The half square triangles I get from sewing the 3 1/2″ block on will be pressed and they will make a border around the whole quilt….that’s the plan.  But plans can change.  I did mix things up a bit by using a scrappy inside to the block and but using all different “whites” for the background.

I’ll be working on this over the next month as time allows.  I’m hoping to get it finished by the end of the month…we’ll see.  A blog reader gifted me a HUGE bag of 2 1/2″ squares and they’ve been going into these blocks.  It’s fun working scrappy….my favorite mode.

If you’d rather make the block paper pieced style, the magazine has the template for that.

They have lots of great giveaways going on in conjunction with the blog hop over at Quiltmaker’s blog.  Find them all here.  There is also a complete listing of other blogs who are showing off their block with many hosting their own giveaways.

We are hosting one here…actually two.

The first name drawn will get a copy of Quiltmaker’s 100 Block Volume #13.
The second name drawn will get a copy of Quiltmaker’s 100 Block Volume #13 AND a copy of our quilt book Country Girl Modern….Haven’t seen out book??  We’re pretty proud of it….

You can read more about it here.

To enter to win simply leave a comment telling us how you found out blog.  We’ll pick a winner next week on Tuesday.