Hive 1 January Tutorial: Piano Keys for Leah

 Happy New Year, Hive 1!

Last summer, my hive was kind enough to bear with me with what I'm sure many of them thought was a little crazy. I'm in love with the blocks I received, craziness and all, and have been fiddling with them ever since. I've sewn a few of them together, added some extra bits, and rearranged over and over. Puzzling a quilt together might be my favorite part of quilting. To help me along with this puzzle, I'm asking you now for a Piano Keys block to fill in gaps, both color-wise and space-wise. Hopefully this will be a pretty easy one to start off the year with.

Size: I'm asking for your work in a rectangle of 8" by 16", as I plan on using it a bit like sashing. Please note I made two blocks for this tutorial. You only need to make one.

Here you can see the blocks you'll be helping me supplement. 

Fabric selection can be as varied as you like, I just ask that you avoid holiday/religious prints. Novelty prints that you think a little kid would like are fine; I'm making this quilt for my youngest daughter! I want each of the blocks to be comprised mainly of two adjacent colors of the rainbow or on the color wheel. Blue with green for instance, or purple with red. Other colors are allowed in small amounts (see the butterfly wing print in my photos, which I classified as a purple but underestimated the greens that would show up), but the mains should be the two you choose. Please choose a minimum of four fabrics so that they can be arranged to look random rather than alternating.

My example blocks in the photos are green with blue and blue/indigo with purple. Here's my fabric pull, which I decided to split into two blocks when I realized it spanned a bit further than just two colors. This photo shows thirteen fabrics. You don't need that many!

Cutting: This is flexible. You'll need to cut enough 8.5" strips to sew together into a 16" long rectangle. (I suggest 8.5" to give a little wiggle room to trim down to 8" at the end. Things are bound to get wonky somewhere in there.) I used 13-15 strips per block but your numbers can vary. Strips should be between 1" and 3" wide.

The little checkers will disappear after this photo because here is where I found out I'd cut the checked strips about an inch too short. Whoops! Not my favorite anyway.

Layout: Arrange your strips until you're happy. I just went for something pleasing that avoids the same fabric repeating too close to itself.

Assembly: I piled each of my blocks' strips up in order before bringing them to the sewing machine. Chain piecing is quick and easy: just sew the first two strips together, then the next, etc., until the pile is gone, repeat with sewing the first pair to the second, and on and on. 

Of course the eagle-eyed among you might notice that I've completely lost my original arrangement in this process. You can learn from my mistakes by photographing your layout and referring back as you go, by pinning everything in order, or by going more slowly and carefully than I did. Or just wing it.

Then press, trim to 8" by 16", and you're done!

I can't wait to see your creations! And when you post, please let me know if you have any amazing wisdom on stash storage. Because I suspect there's better out there than bins that morph into piles.