Ya gotta love sundays!

hiyall,

ya gott love sundays! I like teaching quilt classes at the local quilt shop on sundays. today was one of those days. I taught a class called ' stack the deck'. It use to be called mousetrap. we called it that cause of the triangle shaped middle block that reminded you of a piece of cheese in a trap.

these lovely ladies are my students. AJ, Jan and Seanea. They had a good time and loved the challenge of slice and dicing the blocks, shuffling the layers, and sewing it back together.

these are the finished blocks, you have to be careful when you shuffle the deck or you end up with 2 of the same pieces of material in your block. the formula goes as follows: select 5 ~ one yard cuts of fabric. cut 4~8 1/2 strip from each yard. then subcut into 8 1/2 in block. each yard will yield 16~ 8 1/2 in blocks. you will have a total of 80 blocks.

~take one of each block, 5 total and stack together.

~make 3 slices into the stack of blocks, see pictures for guide lines

~number each stack and shuffle in this order. #1 block take the top piece and place on the bottom of the stack. #2 take 2 top 2 pieces and put in the bottom of the stack. #3 take the top 3 pieces and place of the bottom of the stack. #4 take the BOTTOM piece and place on the TOP of the stack.

~ now your ready to sew. for this you work backwards. sew #3 and #4 together, press and trim off excess of the MIDDLE. dont worry about the edges, you will square up after the block is complete

~take the #3/4 unit and sew it to #2. press and trim off excess on the middle.

~take #1 and sew to the #2/3/4 unit. now you can square up the block. it should square up to 7 1/4 to 7 1/2 inch

stack and cut your blocks 5 pieces at a time. you will end up with 80 blocks total. make your rows 8 across and 10 down. this will make your top before borders 56 x 80.

the block has the appearance of the crazy quilt block. you can use your fancy stitches on your sewing machine to do mock crazy quilt. thank you for taking the time to read this blog entry and take a chance and try this block!

Keep On Stitch'n On!

(mauh) Liz