Sewcializing MegaBlocks

Last fall the Fat Quarter Shop began sponsoring a quilt-a-long titled the Sewcialites in which participants sew one block a week. I thought it might be fun, keep me engaged in the sewing room during COVID times, and not be an overly involved  commitment. One block per week – I could certainly handle that! Also, I could use some of my buildup of scraps. Per the Fat Quarter Shop:

We’re celebrating our quilting community with a free block of the week quilt along. We’ve joined forces with 18 talented designers to bring you a 38-week quilt along with amazing sampler blocks and sew many options! ... We’ll release one block every Friday, starting on Friday, September 25, 2020 and ending on Friday, July 2, 2021. ... The block patterns are offered in three sizes: 3″, 6″ and 9″ finished.

 

The suggested complete quilt as shown was not cohesive enough for my taste but the concept of a block a week and the variety of blocks, all consistent in size, intrigued me. Time passes quickly. I had definitely decided on the 9" size but it was not until May, eight months after the September start, that I experimented with my first block. I picked a light and a dark fat quarter, both in the green family, and not my favorite fabric choices. I felt no compulsion to start with Block #1 and try to catch up. Instead I chose #28 Hope Block. Ironically the block was named "Hope", perhaps a good omen of my upcoming endeavors. I read somewhere on the site that I could get two blocks out of one fat quarter. Therefore it stood to reason that I could get four blocks out of two fat quarters. I laid the two fat quarters face to face and cut all the pieces for the background and main color as well through both layers at once. I would get two pair of blocks, each member of the block pair being the color reversal of the other. I was pleased with my experiment. By alternating a predominantly dark block with a predominantly light block and rotating 90° I wound up with an intricate 18" block, which I dubbed my MegaBlock. There were two options for arranging those four blocks which I show in a follow-on photo. This was cool! I was becoming excited. I very well may make this block again in preferred colors other than green. As a bonus, I had so little waste that I was not tempted to keep the remains of each fat quarter – well, maybe an occasional strip for a future strip quilt of scraps.

 #28 Hope Block: April Rosenthal, Prairie Grass Patterns

My green experiment was successful. But then logic got the better of me and spontaneity fell by the wayside. I would set aside these practice blocks. If I continued to make more with random fat quarters, then at the end I would have 38 blocks in a variety of scraps that had a snowball's chance in hell of blending together. Instead of scraps, I would press into service one of those fat quarter bundles that I am so prone to buy on impulse because a few of the prints in it are just too cute to pass up. I also noticed in February that I had no appropriate red and pink quilt to display. I decided to unbundle my fat quarter collection of Moda's A Walk in the Woods by Aneela Hoey. I set aside some of the large scale prints, like the foxes or the little girl strolling through the woods. Some blocks had small pieces that would chop up  the whimsical print  and fall short of showcasing it to good advantage.

I was not going to buy a background fabric but draw from my stash. Instead I planned to pair a light and dark combination of two fat quarters from the bundle for each set of four blocks. First up were pink and red, and I chose a block pattern that would rotate 90° nicely, especially if I reversed the colors. #4 Spirited Block was a good pick and I liked the four block assembly that resulted, shown in follow-on photo. Has it become obvious yet that my one-block-a-week has now become four-blocks-a-week?

 #4 Spirited Block: Vanessa Goertzen, Lella Boutique

Next, to be different, in #11 Cheer Block I tried a pink and blue combination – not my favorite, but it does seem to work somewhat due to the little blue birds. I learned something interesting with this block design. When I reversed the colors in the block partner, I had to also reverse the rotation direction of the "arrows". In the pink-centered block on the left of the middle blue-centered block, the colors are reversed but the arrows spin counterclockwise in both. In the pink-centered block on the right of the middle blue-centered block, the colors are reversed but the arrows spin clockwise in the pink-centered block on the right and counterclockwise in the middle blue-centered block. I scratched my head on that one for a while. By rotated the HSTs at the four edges I "fixed" it and all meshed much better. When the four blocks are joined, in the follow-on photo, the pink arrows go counterclockwise in the blue-centered blocks and the blue arrows go clockwise in the pink-centered blocks. The bi-color arrows that appear at the block joining seams are an engaging surprise. I think that #4 Spirited Block had symmetry about one diagonal but #11 Cheer Block had planned asymmetry around both diagonals. This Sewcialite challenge is teaching me in ways I did not expect. I "cheered" when I finally got that 18" mega-block together to my satisfaction.

 #11 Cheer Block: Me & My Sister Designs

My next block was the #25 Virtue Block. My color selection of red and blue pops. No rotations are needed to get the two toned layout and neither fabric is directional. It is said that patience is a virtue. I did require patience to assemble all those flying geese – 8 per block, times 4 blocks – 32!

#25 Virtue Block: Bonnie Olaveson, Cotton Way

In #30 Gratitude Block I tried again the pink color, this time pairing it with gray. With this block and fabric combination, I challenged myself to get the rows of circles in the gray pieces to line up the way I wanted them to. It took pre-planning on how to flip those gray corners on pink-centered snowball blocks. Note to self: avoiding pairing a directional print with another directional print. I will drive me bonkers.

#30 Gratitude Block: Camille Roskelley, Thimble Blossoms

I needed a break from 45° angles so the #23 Steadfast Block was a welcome relief. It was not entirely mindless however. I wanted the gray/red railroad-track-like fabric to orient a certain way. Due to tight fabric limitation, the rectangles all had to face with the "tracks" lengthwise. They therefore fell at 90° in some places in the block. I do enjoy the varying size checkerboard pattern that appears in the four block mega block photo below.

 #23 Steadfast Block: Sherri McConnell, A Quilting Life

For my next MegaBlock I paired a white/red basket-like fabric with the mini-mushrooms. How else does one gather mushrooms during a walk in the woods? (Yes, I realize in the previous MegaBlock I referred to the gray/red as railroad-track-like fabric.) Since I had fun challenging myself with fabric orientation in the #23 Steadfast Block, I advanced to fabric orientation of #29 Delight Block. My self-imposed constraints were that the spikes in the basket or the background behind the basket spikes should all face the same way. The pieces within the basket base should also face the same way as if they were woven that way. Thankfully the mini-mushroom fabric was not directional. I very carefully laid out the fabric orientation in both color options before assembling. 

 #29 Delight Block: Me & My Sister Designs

I have made 6 MegaBlocks so far out of the fabric from my selected Aneela Hoey fat quarter bundle. I can make 5 more MegaBlocks out of the remaining five fat quarter pairs for a total of 11 MegaBlocks. I will have remaining the 7 large scale prints and 1 mini-print I initially set side from the 30 count bundle. Let's see where this particular Walk in the Woods leads me.