This month’s BOTEOM is “Split Rail Fence.” Elizabeth McInnis put the directions together for us!
Colors
In December we voted on the color scheme put together by Mickey Beebe: Georgia won, which is based on a Georgia O’Keeffe painting with Jade Green, Capri, Snow White, Titanium, Silver, and Blue Jay
GeorgiaGeorgia Palette
Cutting
From each of 5 colors, cut an 8” x 2” strip
From a sixth color, cut a 1”x 10” strip
Assembly
Sew the 8 x 2” strips together to make a rail fence block. Press.
Make a cut across all four strips
Sew the 1×10 strip to the cut edges. Make sure the ‘rails’ still line up.
Press and trim the block to 8” square
That’s all!
Ideally, the insert will contrast with the parallel rails.
Let’s do this with fabrics that read as a single palette color.
This month’s BOTEOM is “Cornered Block” and is the MQG block study for October-November-December designed by Jamie Siel for MQG, colors and organization by Mickey Beebe for SBAMQG.
The color pallet that won the August vote is “New Mexico.” We postponed the winning color to November in favor of having our Community Quilt block be our BOTEOM for November. For this block, please use solids; they do not need to be these exact colors from Kona, but try to remain close to this palette.
New England Color Palette
Examples from Mickey:
The “Cornered Block” is on the MQG website – here (you will need to log in) – or click on Resources and it’s 3/4 down the page.
This block is easy to cut out (most of the pieces are cut from 2 1/2” strips) and quick and fun to make.
Pick 4 out of the 6 colors in this month’s color palette: Celestial, Blue Jay, Grass Green, Lime, Tangerine, and Grellow.
Follow the directions on the MQG website. Press all the seams open.
For a chance to win all the blocks you need to return the entire block, which consists of 3 completed inner block elements and the 2 pieces of sashing. Don’t sew your three blocks together, but if you already did, it’s okay, turn it in as is!
July’s block is a very simple appliqué, presented by Laura Ryle.
There are only 2 rules:
1. You must use solid fabric only. Any color is ok, including black and white.
2. You must hand sew the appliqué.
Directions:
Cut a 5 1⁄2 inch square for the background.
Cut out a 4 inch circle of another color.
The finished appliqué is a 3 1/2 inch circle. This is the size of your template.
Turn the edges under, using your technique of choice. Cut the excess fabric from the back.
The technique that I prefer is to cut a freezer paper circle the size of the finished circle (3 1/2”). Place your fabric down, with the wrong side up, then place the freezer paper with the shiny side up, on the wrong side of the fabric circle. I use a little fabric glue to tack the edges down and then press the edges so they stick to the shiny side of the paper. Be careful to only iron the fabric edges down so that they stick to the freezer paper, you don’t want the freezer paper to stick to your iron!
Center the circle on the background. There should be about a 1 inch border on each side. Hand appliqué.
Match your thread color to the circle.
If you would like an additional challenge, you can piece strips of solids and then cut your circle.
After the circle is sewn down, cut the excess fabric from the back of the circle, leaving a 1⁄4” seam allowance. The paper can then be removed.
This is a simple, wonky block with endless design opportunities depending on how you rotate the blocks.
Example layout of a few Sidebar blocks
We will be using solid colors only (thank you to Mickey for putting together our voting palette, the winning color combination is Émile Alain Séguy Dragonflies.
For this block, you can use tints, shades, and tones of above colors. Black is to be used for sidebars.
Fabric needed for each block:
Four-patches = Four 4.5” squares of the palette colors. You may use two, three or four colors
Sidebars = One each 2 x 8.5” and 2 x 10” black strips
Fabric Layout
Sew the four-patch together
Add the shorter black strip to one side
Sew the longer black strip to an adjacent side
Sewn together, but untrimmed block
Make a trimming template by cutting off 2.5” from the top of an 8.5×11” sheet of paper.
Trimming TemplatePainters Tape
Lay the template on your block, rotating it slightly so it’s off-center. (Adding a small roll of painters’ tape to the back of the template will keep it from sliding.)
Trimming Template laid on block
Lay your ruler along one side of the template and trim off the excess.
