Easter En Provence

My quilting on Flying Flags is on pause until I wind a few more bobbins. Why didn't I just do that?  I felt the itch to work on something different. So I dug around the UFO closet and the En Provence project caught my eye.

En Provence is a Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt project from 2017. I had made 12 blocks and most of the units. It was all those neutral 4-patches that were dragging me down. When I unfolded the project, I found about half of the quilt was sewn together. Five more sashing units were needed and a few more pink tri-rec units. After digging through my neutrals box, I sewed what felt like a million neutral 4-patches. Finally all the parts were ready. I finished sewing the rows, then assembled the whole top. Hallelujah, the top is done!

BEFORE (in 2019):

AFTER:

The bright cheery colors of En Provence reminded me of Easter, so it was an appropriate project for this weekend.The backing will be a lavender star fabric from Connecting Threads that I picked up during one of their backing fabric sales a couple years ago. 

Once the En Provence flimsy was done, it was time to reward myself with a new project. Pam Buda had published a book Vintage Treasures in 2020, and a couple projects had caught my eye. 

The patterns in this book make little table toppers, but I wanted to make a baby quilt so I drafted one pattern into a larger size. The pattern I'm starting with requires thirty little blue/white pinwheels which I wanted to make out of the same fabric combo. No way was I wanting to cut individual triangles from strips! I decided to try the Magic 8 method in which you can make eight half-square triangles from sewing two squares together. I sewed a test piece to confirm exactly what size squares to start. Yes, there is a formula and tables published on several internet sites. They say to take the finished size unit you want, multiply by two then add 1.75 inches. But is the "finished unit size" the finished, sewn-in size or the actual HST unit before sewing it into your project? My test piece helped me see it is the finished, sewn-in size. Here is a chart which shows both finished and unfinished unit size: https://chezstitches.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-magic-8-revisited.html

While you are looking at Karen Walker's chezstitches blog, check out her pattern "Touch and Go". I've loved that design for a rather long time. Maybe I should buy the pattern to make a red and white version as a tribute to my beloved airplane. You can find it on Etsy HERE.

Back to those magic triangles. I decided to round up to the the next quarter-inch on the starter squares to make my test units. Just a little 16th inch trim on the resulting units was needed. I would rather trim a bit when playing with the itty-bitty units I required. So now I need to sew 15 square sets together to make the pinwheels for this new project. Then I can play with blue and neutral scraps to make the rest of the project.

Linking to ScrapHappy (hey, those pink stars qualify for April's pink theme)