Saturday Sampler Q2

Back in April, I showed you my first three Saturday Sampler blocks. Here are the next three—bringing us to the halfway point.

For those who missed the explanation the first time around, this is a monthly block meetup at my LQS. Every year, they choose a theme for the 12 monthly blocks, and this year’s is “Road Trip.” We meet up the last Sat. of the month, learn how to make the block, and are given precut strips to complete it with. They chose to do this one out of batiks.

At the end of April, we hopped back on the Road (to Oklahoma City)…

…which isn’t quite Road to Oklahoma, and is likely another Jacob’s Ladder variant. This block taught me to measure the pre-cut strips before cutting off the required pieces. Two of mine were about 1⁄8″ short of the length needed for all the pieces. Since I’d started cutting the first one without measuring, I didn’t realize until the last two squares—so I had to be careful sewing with 1⁄8″ seam allowances for those. The other strip, I was able to cut the pieces about 1⁄16″ short–not enough to badly throw off my piecing, and enough to squeeze it all in over the length of the strip.

In May, we jumped over to the East Coast, warming up on the Philadelphia Pavement…

…which is very simple to make.

And June brought us back down to the South for Alabama.

…a block that I can’t seem to get to lay flat. Mine is a bit lumpy, but it can be quilted out. I think I was subconsciously using a scant ¼″ seam, which didn’t work out well.

I’m still thinking about layouts and such. I thought I had a great one (it looks awesome in my head), but when I try to mock it up, it just doesn’t look right. So, who knows. I have plenty of time to mull it over.

I have started a label… but you only get a sneak preview so far.

Stay tuned for the next installment in mid/late–October!