Sew Busy

My holiday weekend has been very busy.  The majority of it has been catching up on my quilt class.  We are supposed to bring our finished top to class on Wednesday and I still had to fix my mistake from week one!

That's what I did on Saturday - fix my rail fence rows and then I started to cut my churndash blocks and half square triangles.  If you're like me, you're probably thinking, "what the heck is a churndash?"  This is a churndash block:

See the little spinner?  That's what gives this block it's name.

I had to make four.  They will go on top and on the bottom of my log cabin blocks, which was our week 2 assignment.  I kept my churndash to two colors.  I was beginning to feel the "busy-ness" of the quilt, so I wanted to simplify a little, thus, I only chose two fabrics... plus the "focus fabric" in the center.

The new trick to this block was the "half square triangles".  The instructor taught us a neat little trick so that these are much easier than you would think.   Here's one just trimmed:

Then it was all about piecing the nine-blocks together to create the one churndash 12" square:

Once my churndash pieces were together the quilt top was nearly done!  I just had to piece the churndash and the log cabin blocks together, and then add some sashing to those pieces and attach my split rail on the sides.

Here's a close-up of the middle of the quilt top.  The four log-cabin blocks are in the center and then there are two churndash on the top and on the bottom of the log cabin square.

Here's the top with the sashing between the center and my split rail rows:

Whew... sorry about the angle.  Hope you don't get a little seasick tilting your head to look at it. 

To complete the quilt, I still have to sew an inner border and an outer border.  I was going to do it tonight, but I really need a sewing break.  Perhaps tomorrow... stay tuned!

Happy 4th all!