Cotton Factory (my local quilt shop) had a huge open day on the weekend as an ‘After Market’ party… as in Quilt Market. Yes, #thealison went to her first quilt market in May and on Saturday she shared with everyone all the goodies and new things she has for her shop.
Alison also launched her #cfcblockswap using gorgeous fabrics from her shop.
Open to crafters near and far the swap will work as follows:
- Purchase your Block Pack from Cotton Factory
- Make four blocks
- Return as many (or as few) as you decide by Wednesday 31st August
- You will receive the SAME number of swap blocks by return mail, that you sent in.
I was lucky enough to nab the very first block pack and made up my first block today 🙂
I love the Sue Daley fabric as the ‘constant colour’ and I am a sucker for Sweetwater fabrics so that blue caught my eye… and the Alison Glass is going to make this block just pop!
The fabric included in the pack is enough to make 4 blocks, but be careful when you are cutting out your constant colour (the light fabric) as there is only just enough fabric to cut the 4 strips of 2″ wide as well as the 1 strip of 4″ wide.
Make sure too that you are cutting your strips along the longer side of the FQ so that you can have a bit of leeway with the 20″ length. Alison is going to cut the next lot with a little more wiggle room 🙂
I would also suggest that you don’t cut your 2″ strips down to the 20″ (as the pattern says) before you sew. Sew the long strips together first and THEN cut them into the 5″ blocks. You will have a little left over but better than me on my first block where I was just shy of the last 5″ block!
The blue and orange in my pack I will swap around so that in my first block the orange will make the cross, in the second the blue will.
Here is the second blue with the flipped colours
Another tip when attaching the corner triangles is to fold the block in half (in the above picture that is in the middle of my orange stripe) and to finger press a fold in the middle of the triangle. Pin the centres together and sew.
After cutting out all the fabric for the four blocks, here is the bits I have left… I will keep these to see if I can incorporate them into the sashing or border or binding when I have all the blocks together 🙂
And one last picture of the two blocks together 🙂
What a fun idea!
Thanks for the great review Anne! You have summed everything up beautifully and your blocks look just super.
Great blocks, Anne – and of course you’ve done a lovely job as always.
Beautifully done Anne
The not cutting the 20 in strips to length is an awesome tip – if only I had read this blog before finishing!