More Play

Ah ha! I've figured out for you--those of you who asked--which magazine the American Jane pattern appeared in! It was in the September/October 2008 issue of McCall's Quilting. Here's a photo:

I remember seeing the article and being amazed at how easy the blocks went together--in strips rather than set-in piecing, which I had expected with a hexagon shaped pattern. And once I saw that, I ran right over to my computer and started e-shopping for a 60 degree ruler, which I finally found--it seems they aren't as plentiful as one would imagine! But eventually I found this one:

Then, at some point, I saw a photo of a hexagon-type quilt that was done with string-type piecing, and that made me think I'd like to make these blocks using random width fabric strips. Here's how mine looks so far up on the design wall--I think I have all the triangles cut for the main hexagon blocks and other random fill-in bits and pieces; not everything fits on the wall though:

From the comments left on yesterday's post, I think there may be a few of you who would like to make this quilt--or something similar, so I thought I'd explain my steps so far.

First, I started by cutting strips from scraps in various widths from 1" to 2" and everything in between! You'll need the strip sets to be the length of the width of the fabric, around 40". Because I'm making mine scrappy, it didn't bother me one bit to piece two strips together to get the 40" length, and that allowed me to use smaller pieces from my scraps and stash.

Once I had a good pile of strips, I started piecing the strip sets. I decided to cut my triangles with a height of 5-1/2", so I made my strip sets at least 5-1/2" wide, although sometimes they might end up as much as 6" or so wide.

To cut my triangles, I'd line up the 5-1/2" line at the base of the strip set and cut along either edge of the triangle.

I'd then flip the triangle ruler and use the other edge of the strips as the base and cut the next triangle--in the piece above, I'd have a second set of triangles with the green as the bottom strip. Each block requires 6 triangles, and a 40" strip set would give me enough triangles to make two different blocks.

Tomorrow I'll show you how the blocks are pieced in rows--or at least I WILL if I get more play time! I have a couple days off work, but I've neglected my chores around the house to an alarming extent, so I'll need to take care of those first! See you later!