Mystery Quilt for May - week #2

Each Wednesday during the month of May I will post another step in creating our 1,2,3 Layer Cake Mystery quilt. If you missed my first post with all the details you can find it HERE.

This is the assignment for week #2: You will be cutting, pressing and squaring all of your block pieces for the quilt.

Place one of your sewn layer cake pairs onto your cutting mat. Using a long ruler or other straight edge as a guide - cut the square set across the diagonal. Without moving your pieces - align your ruler to the opposite side and cut once again on the diagonal.

You will now have 4 subcut Half Square Triangle sections from this square set.

Keep all 4 of these grouped together - this will now become a SET of HST units. Continue to cut and stack your sets of HST units.

Once you are finished cutting your sets from the layer cake pairs you will press them open.

Here you can see all of my HST sets pressed open.

I would like you to pull out one or 2 of your Sets.
Measure each of the HST squares.
OK...in a perfect world, these squares should measure 6-3/4".
But I don't quilt in a perfect world.... and I obsessively steam press all of my blocks. Because the fabrics are not prewashed the steam tends to shrink the fabrics up a tiny bit. The majority of my blocks measure 6-5/8". And one measured closer to 6-1/2".

What ever the smallest average measure is - that is what you will want to square ALL of your HST blocks to. So I went ahead and squared up each of my HST's to 6-1/2".

As you trim your squares down - remember to keep them stacked together in those important Sets.

Once you've squared up your HST units you will begin to group all of your SETS into pairs. You should have 8 HST squares in each of these new PAIR SETS. (4 each of 2 fabric prints)

I started grouping mine - (1)light and (1)dark set into pairs. After I ran out of light fabrics I grouped the rest into sets of contrasting pairs. If your layer cake is all in medium tones, dark tones, all blues etc. then just choose to pair sets together that have nice contrast between them.

TIP: If you are using 6 or less fabric prints - you should keep all fabric #1 sets grouped with fabric #2 sets and all fabric #3 sets grouped with fabric #4 sets, etc. This will be important later on to keep a consistent scrappy look to your quilt.

That's All Folk's!
Next week you will begin sewing your block units together.

If you plan on sharing your Mystery Quilt progress on your blog this week please click on the blog link below. This way we can loop everyone together for Show & Tell.

If you don't have a blog, but would like to share a weekly photo - please send them to me via email with "Mystery quilt" in the subject heading.

every quilt tells a story...

How to use Linky....once you click the blue link below you will enter your blog name in the first box (title)
enter your blog address code in the html link box.
enter your name in the last box