Stack 'n' Slash baby quilt

A new project!  My friend Carole is expecting her ninth great-grandchild this summer (the 8th girl) and is no longer able to sew, so she asked me if I would make the baby a quilt.  Of course!  She came over to meet e a couple of weeks ago, and we discussed fabric, patterns, and colors.  She liked some of the prints I already had, but I needed more variety.  A couple of days ago I bought 11 new 1/4 yard pieces to add to the 9 I had.  I paired a light or medium with a darker fabric, then put two pairs together, ending with five groups of four fabrics each.  (Clicking on a picture should enlarge it.)










The cutting was simple.  From each fabric, cut a 7" square, two pieces 4 1/2" by 7", and two pieces 4 1/2" by 15".  From one pair, sew a short rectangle to opposing sides of the square, then a longer rectangle across the top and the bottom.  One quilter calls this making "a positive and a negative," with each fabric as center square then as frame.



Then take the large block, 15" square, and cut it horizontally 6 1/2" from the left side; without picking it up or separating the pieces, cut it vertically 6 1/2" from the top edge, as shown here.  Standing at the corner of my cutting table made this cutting easier, since I could move myself instead of the fabric.





Now mix up the pieces from the four fabrics in the group and sew them together like the original block, making sure you have one patch from each of the four pairings in each block.  As you can see, each block has four different size patches.

I have sewn 12 of these blocks so far and hope to finish the other 8 today.  They go very quickly!  Unfortunately, I did make a couple of mistakes in cutting and have had to unsew a couple of things, but that was easily done.  The next step is to mix up the blocks into a pleasing arrangement of colors and sew them together.