HTH Part 3

Wowsa, it's been a crazy week for me, but I can't let that stop me from getting this next set of mystery clues out on time. I've already shocked one participant, (name hint - she enjoys lin-ing her quilts with pearls) by actually getting the last clues up on time and in doing so foiling all of her plans to rag on me for being late. I can be impressive when I need to be.

So when we last parted ways, you had all sorts of strips littering your sewing table. Or maybe you are one of THOSE quilters who has a place for everything and everything in its place in your immaculate quilting studio. Just so you know, the rest of us find you kind of annoying, but good for you.

1. Wherever your strips are, find them. To review, they will look something like this:

but probably in different colors unless you are being a copycat. By which I of course mean I am flattered.

2. Cut the two A/B/A fabric strips (the green/red/green ones in my sample) to 48 1/2" long.

3. Cut the B/A/B fabric strip (red/green/red) into two strips 19 1/2" long. Set all those strips aside again wherever you were keeping them before.

4. Now retrieve your four pieced scrappy strips, which you marked down the center in the last set of clues. If you forgot to do so, do it now. We'll all wait while you catch up. I'll be over here marking you as "Needs Improvement" in the "Is Prepared for Class" category of your report card.

5. Place your 6 1/2" square ruler on the strip as shown, making sure that both the top and bottom points of the ruler are on the drawn line, and that the right-hand point of the ruler is on the little strippy that you placed on the right-hand side. Cut out the square carefully. You may need to walk around your cutting mat a bit to get all the sides easily. That is okay. A little exercise is good. I prefer that to you cutting yourself and suing me for damages.

6. Slide your ruler down and cut the next square in the same way. Repeat until you have cut 16 squares total, four from each of the four strips.

7. At which point your pile of blocks will look like this, but times 4. Be careful with these blocks as they are all bias. I promise that will come in handy for some of you in the next step.

8. Sew blocks together as shown, in eight sets of two. Because of the bias edges, the blocks will stretch a tiny bit if you need them to to get some decent point matching. Let me reiterate how much I could not care less if you actually match your points, but getting fairly close is probably a good idea for this design. Press each block as shown.

9. And you are done for the week. We'll finish it up next week; feel free to try to figure out what I have in mind. It really isn't rocket science and I imagine some of you might come up with something better than I did.