Online friend Wendy Currie (Wendysquilting) blogged about the Bloc-Loc rulers some time ago–before I moved to South Carolina. These come in different sizes and I bought a 3-size package–so I have a range of choices of which size to use. Wendy, by the way, is an outstanding longarm quilter who lives in Thunder Bay, Canada.
I LOVE these rulers! For this project, I’m using the middle-sized ruler. My resulting blocks are so perfect I don’t really have to measure my bigger units when I sew them together.
But, first, here are the 3rd set of blocks for the Summer Camp Mystery from the Modern Quilt Studio. There will be 6 installments, and the next set comes next Friday. After the 4th set, I may pin all the blocks so far to the design wall to just…admire them? Yes, admire and pet, but also to see how my palette is working together and if I need to make any changes.
The unit for the solid scrappy quilt on the design wall–is a 3 1/2 inch half-square triangle made from TWO 4-inch light-dark squares cut from my solid scraps, layered together. Tara Faughnan uses this method. I also love Bonnie Hunter’s ruler for cutting triangles from strips of fabric layered together, but here I am cutting from scraps too small to use strips, for the most part. And I want more variety than the strip method affords, unless one uses shorter strips.
I layer the two squares and use a quarter-inch ruler strip (I love these rulers too) to mark the sewing lines on the light square. This method is more labor intensive, but also makes a clean unit that never needs resewing as the trick is in the sliver trimming with the Bloc-Loc ruler, not in the perfect sewing of two triangle units.
I put the dark fabric on the bottom and the Bloc-Loc ruler’s ridged edge fits along the seam to hold the unit perfectly in place. You want the ruler lines to be just ON THE FABRIC–not off of the fabric. Sliver trim. I trim ALL of the units I’ve sewn on the dark side first, and rotate each trimmed unit so the other side is facing up. It is satisfying to see the pile growing as I trim each unit.
Turn the pile of units so that the remaining notch is on the right, pointing up, and the light, untrimmed side is down.
The ruler now fits so the name is upside down. Remember to put the ruler’s lines ON YOUR UNIT or your unit will trim too small.
And, voila, you are DONE and have a whole pile of new units to use.
I’ve cut a TON of 4-inch squares to get color variety, so will use them up in making half-square triangle units via chain piecing. You can see I’ll need to keep cutting for the light units. If I don’t use all of these squares, I’ll save them for another project down the road. Meanwhile, my scrap pile is disappearing. And there is a long way to go on the scrap quilt, so, yes, many of these squares will get used.
I think piecing is my most favorite part of the quilting process.
Girlie car is coming home tomorrow as of right now. So I’m off to put gas in the rental, have lunch on the porch, and…SEW. There needs to be a walk in the day at some point. Maybe late afternoon, with music, when the day cools off a bit. Temps are now in the high 80s and low 90s. Summer has arrived.
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