The black and white print that’s predominant in this was fun to play with. I tried out many different fabrics for the outer corners before I settled on the other black and white print. I don’t know if this will go in the big quilt but am pretty sure there’s at least two quilts in the making.

The back:

The cats are already seemingly used to the tree being gone and were happily sitting on the windowsill on Sunday.

First Lester:

Then Smudge.

Thursday was a marvelous day!! First off, there was mail. What was in the mail? The new Patchwork of the Crosses book. What an absolute treasure. There are many, many close-ups of the blocks from the original quilt and an absolutely fabulous centrefold photo of the entire quilt. The photographs are so amazingly crisp that one can really study the different fabrics Lucy Boston used in her quilt. It’s really quite astounding to see how she got the effects. The book gives all the directions one needs to make the blocks.

There have been a couple of questions about fussy cutting/printing with Inklingo to get special effects with the Patchwork of the Crosses shape.

The first thing that has to be done is to print, on plain paper, a sheet of the shapes. Once that’s done, cut out the interior of the shape along the stitching lines to get a window template. The second picture in this series shows the window template.

As I’ve been deciding on fabrics to use for these blocks, I’ve had that window template at my fingertips the whole time. As I pull out fabrics, I put the template on them to see what kind of effects I may be able to get.

With this stripe:

I possibly could get this effect, which could end up depicting a square in the centre of a block if I decide to use it.

This striped fabric rather intrigues me, although I may end up using the wrong side of the fabric rather than the front.

Putting the window template on it shows me that I can get sets of 4 of the stripe going horizontally easily. If I turn the fabric or use a different window template, I can get 4 of a vertical stripe.

This fabric will definitely be used. It’s a somewhat wider stripe that will give a great effect. I have only a small piece of it so will play with the window template to make sure I get the most out of it.

I can get four out of it easily horizontally but not vertically as the piece is just too small — but the four horizontally will work perfectly. I’ve already been thinking about the fabrics that will be used with this in a block.

This fabric has a perfect repeat for fussy cutting these shapes.

If you click on this shot, you’ll see that the window template shows me that I can get 2 of each of 2 different motifs in a horizontal row. So if I cut two pieces of the fabric making sure I’m getting the exact same repeat, I’ll have 4 different sets of 4 pieces — which will make for another interesting effect in one of the blocks.

The trick is to always put the window template on to the fabric face down, as the printing will be on the back of the fabric. Once I’ve sorted out where to position the window template to get the shapes printed on the parts of the fabric I’ve picked out, I then put the large square rotary ruler on top of the window template, which is in a plastic sheet protector. I line the top edge of the ruler up with the top of the template and the right side up with the right side of the template.

Then all that has to be done is to ease the window template out from under the ruler and then cut. It sounds so much more complicated than it is. Once one has done this once it becomes second nature!

The second best part of Thursday? The gardeners came with lots and lots and lots of flowers to plant. I guess we’re finally past the threat of any frost. I imagine by the time Friday is over the flowerbeds will look fabulous with lots of glorious blooms.

Lester was very busy Thursday watching out the window as the gardeners kept bringing out all the flowers and the window cleaners went flying by. What fabulous timing — wonderful clean windows just as the flowers get planted!

I couldn’t resist this fabric combination for yet another Patchwork of the Crosses block. Striped fabric is so much fun to fussy cut for the centres of these blocks. Next I want to play with a wider stripe and see what kind of effect I can get with that.

The back:
And a Smudge look from last summer. It was pretty overcast on Tuesday and neither of the kitties were posing for the camera.

Once again, the camera is a bit off on the colours. The corner pink hexagons are actually much paler than they look in this photo. The other colours are true, so I’m thinking it must be that little bit of purple in the pink that is throwing off the camera.

The back — where the colour of the corner pink pieces is also off:

I may slow down on making these blocks until I find a few more stripes and other special fabrics for the blocks. I love making them and may just make a few blocks for a baby quilt until I find the fabrics for the big quilt. I have a couple of absolutely glorious peach and yellow prints but want to find a stripe or border print that will work with them as well as being one with which I can get some special effects.

A typical Smudge pose.

Green is one of my favourite colours. Making this block was fun. It reminds me of a salad. Clearly my quilt will be quite scrappy if the first 10 blocks are any indication!

The back:

As well as working on this block and another, which is unfinished as of right now, I also started writing the pattern for the Butterfly Stars baby quilt. I still have a fair bit to do on it, but hope to have it finished sometime within the next week.

We had the most bizarre weekend as far as weather goes. Saturday, during the day, was in the low 60s. Saturday night? Saturday night we had a wind chill of 0. I couldn’t believe we had to turn the heat back on. There was a fairly intense thunderstorm that preceded the cold front with lots of lightning and thunder. Normally, the kitties aren’t the least bit concerned by storms but Smudge’s eyes got a big saucer-like when the thunder was really close. Lester slept through it.

On Sunday, even though it was still rather chilly for the last day of May, Lester was happy hanging out on the windowsill.