Ribbon Square + Orphan Blocks
Happy Friday, friends! I hope you’ve had a good week, but if not - the weekend is here!
I’ve had a good one. It’s nice to be back in the swing of routine, plus no one is sick and the days are growing longer. I had the opportunity to sew in my attic sewing room on a few sunny days. Bliss!
I finished my January blocks for the Penny Sampler Pattern Club (signups open here!) and started on February blocks. Yes, I get to work ahead! It’s actually hard for me to resist plowing through the whole year’s worth of blocks, but I know it’ll be fun to sew along with you.
Speaking of, love seeing your blocks show up on Instagram with #PennySamplerPatternClub! Don’t forget to follow the hashtag if you’re in the club. You’ll see blocks made by other members in your Instagram feed, which makes it easy to connect and share ideas.
After auditioning several fabrics, I sewed the easy-peasy Ribbon Square block for my Dutch-inspired Penny Sampler. It almost feels like cheating sewing it this way, because it’s SOOOOO much easier than the way we did it using traditional HST blocks for the first Penny Sampler. So quick and accurate. Hooray!
The Ribbon Square block is a great opportunity to use a print for the background fabric. My pattern for this block helps you control directionality in your fabric choices, so you could use something like this bird print and have all the birds flying the same way. This fabric is Sea Farer, and you can find it at Fenceline Fabrics by the yard or in the Penny Sampler custom bundle that echos my color scheme.
Did you like that pretty, bold blue in my Ribbon Square block? It’s a newly restashed solid from the FreeSpirit Designer Solids collection. I love these smooth, vivid solids from the manufacturer of fabrics by Tula Pink, Anna Maria Horner and Denyse Schmidt, to name a few. The weight and feel is just what I’m expecting when sewing with quilting cottons.
Starting with the white fabric and moving clockwise, these colors are: Winter White, Spark Gold, Cornflower, Taffy, Cornmeal, Royal, Aegean, Spring Green, Serpent, Caribbean, Sap and Julep. Most of these colors are for my Penny Sampler, but I also have plans for sewing with Anna Maria’s Hindsight collection. Whoot!
“One of the fabulous aspects of @stitchedincolor’s new block of the month pattern club quilt, the #pennysampler, is that it is customisable. You can switch blocks or design your own to make your quilt unique. There are quilt diagrams and detailed information about the quilt layout to make this process super easy.”
One more thing before I go! This morning I saw the above photo from @TinCatSew about how she’s planning to use some orphan blocks in her Penny Sampler quilt. What genius!
I think this combination is going to work out so well for her! Thanks for sharing the idea, Cat.
There are lots of spots in the quilt where you could swap in a 6” or 12” finished block from another project. I just had to share this, in case you have some special blocks that need a good home.
