Playing a Bit...

I have had online friends for probably close to 30 years now.  Way, way back, we did a couple of exchanges of blocks for a "Dear Jane" quilt.  I overachieved big time and ended up with many more blocks than I needed for a king sized quit that I made with blocks that were not in the exchange!!  

I have donated probably 200 blocks, and used probably 50 as borders on two smaller quilts and still have 51 blocks left which are pictured here.

We recently got in a discussion of these blocks on line so I dragged them out and now am planning to do a quilt from them.  I surprised myself by realizing that I had never done anything with the original blocks from the exchange so I have 185 of them as well!!!  Sigh... As I am a compulsive finisher, these will get used before too long!

One of the quilt club members down here posted a picture of a quilt she was making which I think she called disappearing rail fence.  I really like the look of it so decided to go into the huge bags of 2 1/2 strips and see what I could come up with.  

You basically sew three strips together with a light at one end and then whatever you want for the other two.  I chose to use a medium value in the middle and a dark on the outside and limited my palette to green and blue shades.  After I sewed the strips together, I cut then into 6 1/2 inch squares -- you get six per strip.  Then you cut half of those diagonally from left to right and the other half right to left so you end up with four piles that look like this.

I always make one block first to test the pattern I had figured out.  Too bad my first block was wrong, wrong and wrong.  Couldn't figure out why I was only using half my triangles!  So rip apart I did!  

This is the correct format.  I actually managed to sew them together wrong a second time but finally stacked the pieces as you see above so I wouldn't do that again!  The rest was fast and uneventful!

Here it is up on the design wall mostly done -- have one row to go!

Here it is all sewn together just waiting for borders now so it will be the official 40 x 40 inches.  It is 34 x 34 now.

I turned it on its side to see what a diagonal set would look like and really really like that so I have a bunch more blocks done and have to make a few more and that will be done!  I do have a thing for diagonal sets! 

I do have some more ideas for different things I can do.  It is really good to find something I really like to do with the bags of 2 1/2 strips that I have besides making 4-patches!