Finally Digging in the Pink!

I made myself sit down and play in my pink scraps today for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge .... what fun!!!

Introducing Fantasia!  

This block is inspired by a quilt I saw on Pinterest made by Leanne at She Can Quilt.  She calls her quilt Butterflies, but she says the original block found in Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Quilt Patterns, is called Fan Quadrille, designed by Mountain Mist.  What a quaint, old-fashioned name!  Makes me envision a fancy ballroom filled with colorful ladies and gentlemen, all dressed up in their finest and dancing very properly to some very dainty music, 18th century-ish.  But this quilt will not be at all old-fashioned, and I'm not thinking it will be very proper or dainty either.  I'm thinking it will be more along the lines of fun and sassy!  And so I've renamed this quilt Fantasia.

Don't you love all the different pinks in this block?  My pink scraps are very limited and I have to admit I was really tempted to bring out the fat quarters and cut some pieces from them.  But I am determined to make all my RSC13 projects strictly from scraps, with the exception of unifying backgrounds, sashing, etc.  After all, this is a SCRAP challenge, right?

This was not a particularly easy block to make, so I'm glad I only have to make one a month.  I had planned to simply cut some squares and some drunkard's path blocks.  But as you can see from the initial layout below, that didn't quite work out....

The circles are too circular, and there is no smooth transition to the square blocks.  See the difference in the reconstructed block below?  The upper right corner is now a smooth curve, much better than the too round section in the bottom left corner....

In order to cut those smooth curves, I got out my handy-dandy Quick Curve Ruler designed by Jenny over at Sew Kind of Wonderful.   I really love this ruler!  It made very quick work of cutting these curves, and I was able to cut all the pieces at one time!

Of course, I had to recut new pink pieces, and I cut them a quarter inch larger to give me some wiggle room on sewing the curves.

I was able to salvage the white corners thankfully...

After sewing them together, I trimmed the section down to 3-1/2" square to fit the block.  You may notice that the white section is just a smidge (that's a word isn't it?) short of the 3-1/2", but I kept that in mind as I put them all together and it worked out fine.  For future blocks, I'll cut the white squares a little larger too before I make the cut for the curves.

Here's the first "fan" with nice soft curves, laid out and ready for sewing!  :*D

I think I will enjoy making this block now that I have worked out the kinks LOL!!!  I'm hoping it will make a fun, bright, happy quilt.

Next, I started on my Crossroads blocks.  This is also a pattern I found on Pinterest, created by Amanda at Threadbias blog.  She has a tutorial for this if you like the block and would like to make one, or two or a dozen.... they are like candy - too good to stop at one!

I dug into my 2-1/2" strips bin to see what I might have in pink for this block....  hmmm, not much!  But look at that wonderful Supergirl fabric!

It's a shame that iconic "S" wouldn't show up in this block, so I'm saving one strip of it for another project.  I plan to make four of these little blocks in each color so that there will be a lot of variety of color in the finished quilt at the end of the year.  They go together very easily.  Don't these look fun?

Next week is the last Saturday for pinks, and I'm planning to work on my Lone Starburst blocks then.  I talked about them on a previous blogpost HERE.  Then, if I have any pink scraps left over, I'll cut them into squares to go in my precuts - unless I decide to get crazy and make more blocks ;*D

Be sure to go over to SoScrappy to see all the other lovely PINK projects in process for the 

Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year!

Hugs & Blessings,

Teresa

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