CROCHET SEW ALONG: CUTTING YOUR FIRST BLOCK

Good Morning my Crochet Sew Along Friends!

We are so excited to be moving on to our “next step” today!

There are some seriously yummy “fabric pulls” happening over on the #crochetsewalong hashtag… lots of you have jumped on board in the last few days! Have you taken a look? If not, you definitely will want to. They are inspiring and it is so much fun to see what everyone else is choosing! Comment on each other’s posts and let’s create a little Crochet Sew Along community together! And if you haven’t had a chance to do it yet, no worries at all, join us anytime at any phase of the SEW ALONG this summer. There is nothing as “too late to join” around here!

Here are just a few of the “fabric pulls”…

For our winner of the the prize of the Fat Quarter Shop gift card [HERE is their link if you need to go shopping for some more Fig Tree fabric- or any other kind of fabric for that matter :-)] for the first week, go take a look at Instagram by noon today, Friday! We will also announce what the next prize will be for this week at the same time.

For those of you who are wondering what the prizes are all about… its just a fun way to get excited about the process and to keep ourselves motivated. We all know how easy it is for life to get in the way of our sewing projects and how overwhelming it can all get sometimes and especially how fun it is to start something new but then the motivations sometimes wanes in the middle of the project and we never finish! So the prizes each week are a way to help with our motivation to keep moving forward. That’s it… that and its always fun to have a chance to win something!

Today we are going to officially start cutting for our Crochet pattern. If you are following our schedule, you have a full week to do this so no worries… or as the kids say these days… YOU GOT THIS. And its totally your call if you want to cut the entire quilt or just one block at a time!

These are the things you will want to do/things to think about for this next step of the project:

• You will need to decide on your background for sure. I know this was something we did in the last step but I know that a lot of you loved both the idea of the light or the color background and the dark/black one. So at this point you will have to make a final decision because that will determine what you cut for the background pieces of your blocks.
• If you are still totally undecided, this is what you can do: you can make one sample block and then decide -OR you can make 2 quilts simultaneously. I know this is quite an undertaking but I know that several of you are considering doing that! IF YOU WANT TO CUT YOUR BACKGROUND ONE BLOCK AT A TIME BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT SURE, you will only need (60) of the [d] pieces for each block.
• If choosing fabric combinations makes you crazy, don’t stress out too much about your choices. Remember that there will 16 of these blocks so although we want to love each and every one, you will definitely have favorites so don’t let this slow you down.
• If it was me, I would choose at least 6 fabrics to start off with and cut each one according to the instructions at the top of page 2 of the pattern. With 6 fabrics, you will have lots of great combinations to work with for your first set and you can just leave the others for your next blocks. For now you only need to make one combo that you love… or two if you want to sew two at a time.
• For each block, choose 3 fabrics for the rounds, colors and prints that you like together and 1 fabric for the center. I recommend 4 different colors and at least a little bit of variety in scale. What I mean by this is that you might want to choose a combo like a dot or small geometric print and a small print or two -OR- a small floral, a gingham, a dot and a large floral -OR- a little “ditsy” [official term for little tiny random prints] or two, a small stripe and then a larger floral of some kind. Basically, you want 4 prints that look good together in a combination of 4 and that are different enough from one another that they don’t all “read” exactly the same in pattern once you start putting them in rounds.

If you have any questions at all about this step, please ask them below. Let’s pretend that we are in class together and you are asking me to help you choose fabrics. If you want my opinion, I can totally give it! This is the best place for me to answer and all CROCHET SEW ALONG questions. So please feel free to ask them!!