Chained 5 Patch Block

I could fill a really long post with a smorgasbord of things that have been going on life-wise lately! Quilting-wise, eh, not so much. It's been a bit slow around here, but I did get a new 1/4" piecing foot and two new quilting books, so that's... somethin... :P

I got the new quilting foot because the old one I had seemed like it wasn't made very well and the guide shook quite a bit, making it not perfectly accurate. It also liked to fold back my fabric, instead of letting it feed through smoothly. The new foot works much better, which will be really helpful in making this quilt for my sister's birthday! (She doesn't read my blog. :) )

Chained 5 Patch, from the Quilter's Cache

March 6 2001 Marcia Hohn

I found the block, and tutorial on the Quilter's Cache. I had a lot of fun time going through their collection! I would suggest using their tutorial for this block (duh, lol - I hope this post doesn't come off as a tutorial of a tutorial), as it was pretty easy to follow, but I thought showing you guys photographs might be helpful while going though it. Their tutorial has some computer/graphic images, and text, but for me real photographs are always a big plus! So here we go!

Cutting
 Color 1:

Color 2:

Color 3:

Color 4: (Eventually you will cut this 18" strip into smaller pieces.)

Sewing
Step 1: Sew the following blocks together, and then slice it in half.

Step 2: Now sew these blocks together, and slice it in half.

Step 3: Sew these blocks together, slice again!

Step 4: Cut your 18" strip into the following sizes:

Step 5: Now you only have a few pieces left - sew them together as shown below on the left. Grab your pieces from step 3 and sew them together with the strip below. The resulting block will need two white (color 4) 2.5"x5" pieces sewn to the top and bottom.

Arrange your strips as shown in the block layout and you're done! Hopefully that made sense and was easy to follow - like I said, I just wanted to show you guys photos of what I did. I'm not the greatest at explaining things, so I'd definitely refer to the original tutorial. :)

Umm, yea - so I'm a nerd (aren't we all? I mean, c'mon, we have quilting blogs, hehe), and a bit obsessive about making sure this quilt will look really nice for my sister, so I laid out a section of it in photoshop. (Hey, I gotta do something on my lunch break!) I wanted to be sure I was going to like the colors/arrangement. It's not completely accurate, but it helped me make the decision to use brown as the "anchor" color.

I need to make six blocks a week to finish it in time for her birthday! I think I can, I think I can!!

Well guys, I've got a lot of crap going on for the next 3-4 weeks - lots of travel and wedding prep! I sort of saved everything until the last minute, that's just how I be. I'm going to try to squeeze in sewing time wherever I can to take my mind off veils, music selections, decorations, portapotty's (we are so classy) and all that craziness. Thanks for stickin with me while I'm a bit blog-absent! :D

PS AQS in Grand Rapids this weekend! I'm going on Saturday!! Is anyone going?

PSS EZ Dresden deadline is a week away! All I have left is the binding! :) :) Double smileys.