Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Scrappy Cross Block Tutorial

I have a nice simple but effective one for you today, scrappy and a bit improv. By the end you should get something like this

Ok so for this you will need:
Background fabric, cut to the size you want your block to be (mine is 12.5")
Variety of scraps in colours of your choice, width depends on the size you want your cross to be, mine were approx 3" wide

Firstly sew you scraps together in any order that you want (sew with a 1/4" seam throughout), you want to end up with 2 scrappy strips, each measuring a few inches longer than your desired block size (mine measured about 16")
 Press seams and trim sides
 Chose the angle that you want to cut through your background block, cut using a ruler and rotary cutter
 Sew one of your scrappy strips to one of the cut edges of your block, press, then trim away any overhang (this makes it easier to line up the other part of the background block)
 Line up the other piece of the background, sew and press

 Decide where you want the next scrappy strip to go and cut.

 Sew your scrappy strip onto one side, press and trim
 Because you want to ensure that the  strip you have just cut through lines up on both sides of your new strip, your block will not line up on the outer edges, this is fine, we have allowed plenty of extra so we can trim down to size at the end. Line up strip and sew the other background piece on. Press and trim

and voila
Nice and simple but looks great.

This block can be done with so many variations, you can keep adding strips and build it up further

Or how cool would it be to do a giant version of this as a quilt instead of individual quilt blocks

I have started a flickr group so if you do ever use one of my tuts then please post photos, I would love to see