Hive 1 January Block Instructions

Hello Everyone in Hive#1,

My name is Kathleen and I live on a small cattle ranch in NE Oklahoma. I'm about 100 miles or so east from Ree of The Pioneer Woman. I am married with 3 grown daughters and now two grandsons.

I am retired from teaching and help my husband with the cattle while he is at his job during the week.

I started sewing when I was about 12,  I tried to make a jumper to wear to the Valentine dance at school but it was a flop. I pretty much taught myself. Made my first quilt in 1980 and slowly would quilt some for the next ten years to what I would now call myself a full blown quilter. I'm trying to think about what my hardest quilt I've ever done was and I would say it would be my miniature ones. I scale down patterns to 1:12 inch. But I love the challenge.

My favorite dessert is anything with lemon, lemon meringue pie, lemon bars and so on.

My life philosophy is to live my live with gratitude and love for others.

So with that said lets get on to business here, my block I picked is one I found first on pinterest.

I followed the source to Amy Smart's blog "diary of a quilter". She has a very good tutorial that I am giving a link to.

http://www.diaryofaquilter.com/2012/06/peppermint-pinwheel-dresden-block.html

I love two color quilts and Blue and White are my favorite

 What is required is Darlene Zimmerman's EZ Dresden ruler.

I found mine at Hancock Fabric Store for $8. 

The white fabric is Kona white and the blue I would like you to use is to be blues of the shades of denim or navy tones. Can be prints to solids from medium to dark shades. And please no prints with other colors, blue on blue only, like examples

 You will need to cut strips 1 1/4  inch from both the blue and white.  Need 5 strips of blue and 4 strips of white. Using a scant 1/4 inch, sew your strip to look like this. press the seams toward the blue. I first press the back and then turn it over to the right side and press. Getting out any folds or creases and then I lightly starch.

Place the ruler at the top on the 7" line. If you go to Amy site she has very good visual of the ruler placement  Being on blue it is hard to see,

You'll need 10 wedges from the striped fabric

And 10 wedges from a 7 inch strip of the white, a total of 20 wedges.

A couple things that are very important for this circle to work, the strips need to be 3/4 inch when sewn together. And part of the what to watch out for is pressing, try not to stretch your piece while ironing. It can distort the strips

I use a light starch on my fabric after the first pressing. I like a crisp, flat fabric to work with when cutting and sewing. but be careful too much starch can also cause distortion.

Sew your wedges together and press the seams toward the white fabric.

And that is where my instruction end compared to Amy's. I will finish the blocks. I haven't decided how to applique them down yet. On the machine or by hands so to be consistence I'll just do that part.

If you have any questions or problems getting the ruler please contact me and I'll see if I can get you a template at least. But I believe the ruler is easy to find online and I know I will be using mine again. Makes making dresden easy.

http://roseprairiequilts.blogspot.com/
samspalace2@gmail.com