Catching up with Myself -- Morris Hexathon #12, #13, #14, and #15

". . . . though I get no more tired now than I did when I was younger, I take much longer to get un-tired afterwards."  C.S. Lewis

So it goes this week for me as I putter along at catching up with myself and get back into a home/studio routine.  Although it looked like I was here in my studio plugging along last week, I was actually on a family camping trip with my adult children and my grandchildren! 

I had a backlog of four blocks for Barbara Brackman's Morris Hexathon by the time I returned and spent my first afternoon back in the studio working through those.  Oxford Rose, #13 was easy!  I was able to use the kite template from Marti Michell's 3" Kite and Crown set to cut the pieces and although it is a bit large, it will be easy enough to trim the block at the end of the project.

I need more dark blocks and favored these two directional reproduction prints for a contrast of print. 

Canterbury, #14 was fun to make once I determined a piecing strategy.  I used templates #46 and #48 from Marti's Set G plus some strip piecing and cutting tricks.

Rather than cut individual diamonds with template #48, I pieced a strip set of the red and green prints using the template to determine the width of each strip.

Once they were pieced together and pressed, I struggled to determine the correct angle to start cutting the diamond pairs until I laid the pattern sheet directly above the strip set and lined up my ruler in the direction that matched the diagram!  Once that was done, I aligned the ruler's 60 degree line with the edge of the green strip and cut the angle.

I proceeded to cut six diamond pairs using the template to measure the width of each one.

I used the same strategy to get the starter angle for the background parallelograms.

Again, I was stumped for a minute on how to measure the length of the background units, but realized I could just lay a pieced diamond unit right side down on the strip and use that for a "pattern" to cut the parallelograms.  Notice that I used the diamond template and dutifully trimmed the points of the units and marked the "dots" to guide me with the y-seams.

Here is the block laid out and ready to assemble.  There are 18 seams in this block -- interestingly, the seams around the center hexagon are not y-seams but all the rest are.  Because I always want to chain piece, I organized everything for the next block in the series and worked back and forth between the two blocks to maintain my set-in piecing simplified strategy!!  That is why there are stacks of something else at the bottom of this picture.

These are the beginning units for #15, Kelmscott Tile.  It's made up of twelve 4-piece diamond units though the option was presented to use single larger diamonds for the outer "background" diamonds which is what I did. 

Again, I chose to take a short cut and made two strip sets for my 4-piece diamond units.

I cut six units from each strip set and assembled them into the main diamond units.

My first attempt at this block was a bit too small so I remade the diamond units using 1 1/4" strips and trimmed them to the correct size with Template H53 -- the block is the right size now!

Now for the piecing process!  Adding the diamond units to the hexagon center of the Canterbury block is not a y-seam at both ends!  It's a blend of a "partial seam" around the hexagon and a y-seam at the outer edge.  So the first pair is added to one side of the hexagon but I stopped about 2/3 of the way across and left the seam unfinished.  The second pair will be added to the right side of this section and stitching from hexagon end to a dot at the end of the diamond unit.

Press the seams away from the hexagon!

At the end of each of those seams, I stitched together a pair of the strip units for the other block to assemble the 4-piece diamond units for the other block.

Back and forth, back and forth.

The right end of this seam is open for the y-seam needed to insert the background parallelograms. 

(I need a tutorial on how to "draw" arrows on my pictures!!)

Here it is before inserting the background pieces -- these will all be y-seams.

The 4-piece diamonds were finished and ready to begin assembling the second star.  This photo shows the pressing of the "tumbling" units which is the first step of assembling a six-pointed star.

(See a complete explanation of how I piece six-pointed stars HERE.)

All the units are pressed identically.

To keep the points of the first block flat and crisp, I inserted every other background piece, then pressed it before inserting the final three pieces.

And here are final pictures of Canterbury, front

and back.   I like this block and plan to make a larger version of it -- maybe slip one into my Smitten quilt top!?!

And this is Kelmscott Tile front 

and back.  It took a month, but I convinced myself to remake this block so it fits together with the rest!!

 

Now to catch up with the #smorgasblocks project.  I'm three blocks behind on that -- but it was totally worth it to spend 5 days puttering around with my clan.  Here are the grown-ups headed out for a morning paddle while my grands and I indulged in some butterfly chasing and other silliness!!

 

Have a good week!!

 

Mary