Bee Desi with Sandhya K

Jan's queen bee is the very versatile crafter and quilter, Sandhya K. Over to her..

Strings and Four Patch Block.

This is my block after much thought and search for a simple but interesting Quilt Block. I love scrappy and I love 4 patch.

To make this block I chose random strips called strings and then picked up two dominant colours from the strings to make the 4 patch.

You will need 2 solids that are 9” square and a bunch of strings that are 9 inches long. You can go as scrappy as you want with the strings but all should be from printed fabric.

Here are strips of fabric called strings in the Quilting lingo. They are between 1.5 and 2.5 inches in width. Length can be whatever. You can even join two small pieces to get the length. I have chosen random colours but you can see that pink is the dominant colour. (But I am not even very fond of PINK :-))

For the solids for the 4 patch I chose the pink as it was the dominant colours in the strings and turquoise as it goes well with pink and also with many other colours.

Now to make the 4 patch. Take the pink 9” X 9” solid fabric and fold into half and cut to get a 9” X 4.5” rectangle. Do the same with the turquoise fabric. Join. You will have 2 such pieces as shown on the left in the picture below. Join lengthways to make a two coloured squares. Sub cut both in to half and stitch to make a 4 patch by stitching pink to turquoise.

Here are the stitched two 4 patch blocks. Trim them to 8” square. Now this is done keep it aside.

Now take the strings and if you have them about 9” long then start joining them lengthwise to make a 9” square. If your strings are short you can add and make it 9” long. Square your string block to the exact size of the 4 patch. And arrange it like this.

First join one end of 4 patch and one end of string square to make this.
Make other the same.

Now join these two units together to make a block like this.

This will make a block a little bigger than 15.5 inches. Square it to 15.5 inches and you are done.

Seams can go any way you are comfortable with. All on one side or every other seam to one side or all facing inside or outside. I tried making the whirly thing with the seam at the center and got it well. Here is the closeup of it.

A little out of focus. :-)

Thanks
-Sandhya