Vintage Rouge BOM - Using Strip Its

This is my latest distraction.....it's Bloom Creek's Vintage Rouge BOM. I saw this quilt advertised in a flyer by one of my LQS, and HAD to sign up. I NEED a Christmas quilt. And this one was irresistibly stunning. Everyone should make this quilt. It's not as complicated as it looks. All those half square triangles are cut from a single fabric, as are the blades on the Dresden's that look to be two fabrics.

The trick is in the fabric. One of the Marcus Brothers' fabrics in this line is called 'Strip Its'.

The fabric is preprinted with 2.5" strips. For the HSTs,you decide which two strips you'd like to use and cut the strip pairs.

Lining up the angle on my little 4" Nifty Notions ruler with the faux 'seam' on the fabric, I trimmed the strip set to a point.

Then keeping the diagonal line of the ruler on the center 'seam', I aligned the two top edges of the fabric with the 2.5" square markings on the ruler and cut out a 2.5" square

Which turns out to be a perfect HST. No sewing necessary.

To cut another just center the diagonal on the ruler with the center seam again, the point at the top, lop off those irregular triangular shapes, and start over. Sure, there's going to be some waste, but the kit allows for this, and I don't know about you, but I'd much rather toss a few scraps to save me an hour or so of stitching and pressing.

What I'm working on with the first block kit are the 4 blocks in the center of the quilt. For you 'purists', it's not all that obvious that there's no seams, and someone in my class suggested that you could easily machine quilt a 'seam' down the center and no one would be the wiser.

I hope to finish my 4 blocks tonight (I did all the cutting last night), so check back for the results. It's great to finish the homework a few days after the class, but it sucks that the next class isn't for a month :(.

Hope your week is off to a great start!