This block idea came to me in the middle of the night while feeding the baby (think 3am). I didn’t have a free hand, paper, pencil or a light on, so I went to sleep hoping I would remember it in the morning. I did! And I think it will be great for my Lovely Linen Bee April block. Mainly because if I buy fabric to make this AND fabric for my bee month the budget will make grouchy faces at me.
We just made spiderweb blocks for Nikki, so this will be a similar piecing style, on a different shape block. I took a few pictures while making a test block pair, using scraps from another project since they were already in strips.
This is the finished block pair. I have yellow Essex linen/cotton blend for the base and some gray and yellow fabrics for the strings. I will ask group members to add in yellow scraps, and gray if they have them. I plan to keep the center strips gray on all the blocks.
These pieces are 6 3/4s by 12 1/2. I used a corner of my 12×12 square ruler to draw the triangle. The fabric is Essex by Robert Kaufman in Sand. The continuing line at the top indicates which strip to overlap at the top.
Piecing goes quickly, I finger press each seam and do a final press with the iron at the end, before trimming. For this block, we’re always going to have gray as the first strip on each side. You can add an additional gray strip in the piecing, or not.
Flip the block over and trim overhanging strips even with the linen base piece. Don’t worry if it’s not exactly perfect, just don’t trim the linen – if a little of the strings show, it’s fine.
This is where the overlap comes in. Line up a gray piece along the line and overlap the already pieced portion at the top. Sew it down, and finger press.
Here is the fabric lined up, overlapped and ready to sew.
Continue adding pieces until the linen base block is covered. Then press, trim and move on to the next block!
I think this is going to look really great in yellow and gray. What do you think?
