Hive 5 March Tutorial - Broken Frame Block

Broken Frame - Practice block, alternate color way

Hello Hive 5! I’m so excited to be participating in Stashbee for my second year. For March, I’m requesting that you make what I’m calling a Broken Frame block. I doodled this myself, but I’m sure since it’s flying geese and squares that the design’s been done before.

It finishes at 15.5”, however I’m requesting that you send me the components deconstructed. The quilt will need to be assembled in rows rather than blocks to achieve my final design (pictured below). The photo above is my practice block (made in another different color way) so you can see what the block would look like constructed. (Also, apologies up front for poor photo quality! I've been struggling with lighting lately.)

Fabric

You’ll need three colors for this block: light blue, medium to dark blue, and light to medium gray.

I like tone on tones and modern prints. I would prefer no batiks, solids, or licensed character/novelty/children’s prints. If your patterned fabric has white, gray, black, or blue in it, that’s alright, as long as the fabric still reads as the main color. Please try to stay away from multi-color prints.

Here’s my fabric pull:

I could only get so much natural light and couldn't get around the shadow :(

Light blue can range to aqua, but don’t use anything too green. Medium to dark blue can be royal, navy, cerulean, sapphire, etc. I feel like I didn't have a great variety of blues in my stash, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask! I like to use the four-at-a-time flying geese method, so those pieces end up being the same fabric, but feel free to get as scrappy as you want! I’d love a variety of fabrics.

Cutting

To create this block (or rather the components of the block), you’ll need to cut the following:

4 - 5.5” gray squares

1- 5.5” medium to dark blue square

1 - 6.5” gray square*

1 - 6.5” light blue square*

4 - 3.5” gray squares*

4 - 3.5” light blue squares*

*I use Melanie Ham’s four-at-a-time flying geese tutorial, which is where I got the measurements for the flying geese pieces. If you prefer a different method of creating flying geese, the starred pieces are the ones you would substitute for your own method’s measurements. 

https://melaniekham.com/no-waste-flying-geese/

Assembly

As mentioned above, here is the tutorial I like to use for four-at-a-time flying geese:

https://melaniekham.com/no-waste-flying-geese/

*There is a video at the bottom of the post if you prefer watching instead of reading :)

Of course, feel welcome to use whatever method you like best!

You'll make 4 gray-center geese and 4 blue-center geese:

Then, you’ll piece the flying geese together into four "arrow" units, the pieces of the frame:

And that’s it! I would like for the block to be sent deconstructed, so there's nothing more to do :) I can’t wait to see all of your beautiful blocks!

-Amy Gatto