I hope you all had a great Mothers Day. My day started of wonderfully at a local french patisserie.

I indulged in coffee and sugar!!

The rest of the day, I decided that I would play with an idea that has been in my head for a while. I put away my projects that have deadlines etc….just a day of play. It was fantastic!!

I recently bought the book “Unconventional & Unexpected: American Quilts below the Radar”. I have bookmarked several pages.

One of my favorites is this Cross quilt (pg. 179 c. 1940-1970), which is behind inspiring my play today.

I wanted to make my blocks in black and white print fabrics, with a splash of color striped fabric.  I am using strips of black and white cut at 1.5″, 2″ and 2.5″. I then put them in a bag and pull them out randomly (brown bag method), and sew them together, trim them down to 12.5″ squares.

At first, I thought I could use these squares and cut the block across the diagonals. That actually gave me the cross blocks, but also gave me these square blocks as well. I am not sure about the combination yet (??)

For now to save on fabric, I am sewing strips vertically together, using the improv. brown bag method, until it was 6.5″ x 31.5″. I then cut the triangles along the 45 degree angle.

This is how my cross blocks look so far. I really like where they are going. I plan to build them out a bit more and see how they go.

Oh! Apparently, I have a lot of black and white fabrics which means no need to buy fabrics….I can sew from my stash. I am hoping to give an update on these again soon (once I get my projects deadlines complete).