2-1/2" Saga - Rona's 4 & 5

Dan here ~

The continuing saga of the 2-1/2" squares/the 'Rona Series ~ if you missed any previous posts....Part one is here, Part two is here, Part three, the 'Rona Series is here.

With Rona 4 I’m afraid I did not get too resourceful. I had been avoiding the really light 2-1/2” squares because they seemed to jump out of the quilt and that was troubling to my eyes.

Well, on Rona 4, I decided that I would use up some of them as I followed the pattern I had used in Rona 3.  

I naturally made a couple changes ~ the background became a darker grey, the red star became blue and the scrappy four-patch in the sashing became all lights.

This now gave me a sashing star that popped and a blue star in the block that popped as well. 

 I liked it and added a piano border again to finish it up.  

Carol quilted this with a digitized pattern called Birthday 2013.

'Rona 5 required putting on the thinking cap again as it was time for a different look. Well, not a totally different look. I still had a lot of nine-patch blocks so I figured I would work out another nine-patch design. 

Thought that this time I would come up with 2 blocks that would work with no sashing.  I also did not want to fight lining up a lot of seams as the blocks were put together. So with the nine-patch finished at 6" that meant that the base unit in it was a 2” square. 

The design for the alternate block I decided to use put a 3” four-patch in the center of the needed 6” block. I wrapped the four-patch with 1-1/2” background fabric with 1-1/2” square in a square blocks in the corner. 

This left me with seams at 2” intervals in the nine-patch block and at 1-1/2” from the corners of the alternate block. NO seams line up, assembly was easy-peasy.

Finished again with another piano key border. 

The square in a square block creates the interesting illusion that the blocks were not placed in rows, and cause the eyes to roam around the quilt top.

Carol quilted this with a digitized pattern called Deep Blue Sea.

The scrap pile is getting smaller, it doesn’t really look it but after all this makes 7 quilts that have come from mostly the 2-1/2” scrap bin. It’s kinda like cleaning up after a 2’ snow storm with a teaspoon ~ you know you are making progress, it’s just damn hard to see it.