Quilts and Other Stuff from Frances

Quick Irish chain….

On Saturday, I was determined to spend some time in my studio and finish up the last of the “what can you do with a 6-inch block” quilts!!

To recap the story, this time last year I was given 200 six-inch blocks that were to be used for charity quilts. I have proceeded to make 5 different quilts using those blocks as my inspiration. THIS POST describes the last one that I made.

Now I only had 15 squares left and most of those were a white-on-white type of design. I tried to come up with a design that could use those as an entire block and landed on an Irish Chain!!

And, even better than using up the last of the 6-inch blocks, I could make use of the overstuffed box of 2.5-inch scrap squares!!!

Now, have you found a flaw in my math??? When I was planning this quilt, I kept thinking that the white blocks were 6.5-inches and not 6!!! So the 9 patches using 2.5-inch squares would be too big!! ARGH.

I kept thinking about it and decided to go ahead and use those squares but to increase my seam allowance…..

After I sewed the first pairs of squares, I took them to the ironing board and ironed them BEFORE I cut them apart….

That may sound silly, but it is so much faster and easier to do it this way!!!

After the eighteen 9-patches were finished, I measured and found that they were just a smidge over 6-inches. I started to just leave them and “finagle it” while I was piecing, but then decided to go ahead and spend the time trimming them down.

I knew that the trimming would mess up the squares a bit but since there were no matching seams, I did it anyway!!! There wasn’t much to trim…..

Now it was time to layout the quilt using the 6-inch blocks that I had on hand. There were three that had too much print so I substituted those with some of my own……