Pineapples….pineapples and MORE pineapples…..

While at the retreat, I started working on a pineapple quilt, not knowing how big I was going to make it.   The longer I worked, the bigger that I wanted it to be so now I am planning for a Queen Size.

Gyleen Fitzgerald’s technic is VERY easy to do, especially using her ruler!!   

It starts out with a 2-1/2 inch square for the center and then works with 1-1/2 inch strips.   After each round of strip adding, you go to the cutting board and, using her ruler, cut off the extra bits…..

You simply line the 1-inch line up with the top seam, make sure that the vertical lines are straight thru the corners and cut off the dog-ears at the top.

The blocks grow quickly…..

The last cut is made by placing the center square on the ruler over the center square of the block and trimming all four sides….

VOILA…..one completed block…..

The biggest thing to remember with this technic is that all of the cutting is done from the REVERSE side of the block.   If you start lining things up with the finished edge, you get into trouble very quickly.

This past week I have kept on making Pineapples…..44 more of them to be exact!!!

I started laying them out on my design wall but had trouble visualizing the finished quilt because I was having to lay it out sideways.

I finally pieced some of the rows that I was fairly sure about and then carefully rearranged the pieces so that I could see it vertically….

As I looked at it, I wasn’t happy with the red areas so decided to sleep on it and try again the next morning.   After playing around with block placement, I decided that the dark reds were too strong and that perhaps there were too many of them, so I started piecing more blocks in purple and green.

I liked this arrangement much better……

Next up will be setting triangles and borders!!!