A few more recent novelties

 As part of my spring cleaning, I went through my "Quilt Ideas" section of OneNote.  Some photo snips stayed as ideas and several were deleted.  And for some, I decided to draw them out in EQ and move them to "Quilt Patterns".  And of course, then I had to make up kits.   Here are the ideas (mostly from FW quilting groups and advertisements) which became patterns and are now tops hanging in the closet.  I am up to 18 tops now; I should probably spend some time quilting. 

This design I've seen several times recently.  I called it Winding Ribbons but I never saw the original name or designer.  It is a framed 4" square with HST on the corners.  The arrangement of the frame colors creates the optical illusion.  It was easy to piece, but I found putting the blocks together was fiddly.  I ended up piecing the columns, then pressing all seams alternating between rows.  And then I had to press the seams open when I joined the columns.  I really don't like pressing seams open.  I am always worried I am going to burn my fingers.  This one goes in the "interesting but probably never again" category.

This next idea was using the traditional drunkards path block.  The last time I did a drunkards path block was very early in my quilting life.  The baby I made that quilt for is now a senior in college.  I used a new ruler (Classic Curves) which has slots to cut several different sizes.  I also found a video called "curved piecing a drunkards path with two pins" by SewShelly.com that was very helpful. And it went together very easily.  So now I will have to make more drunkards path quilts. I took this top to a recent show & tell with a group I've been on retreat with last year.  One of the ladies asked to purchase it from me and she would finish it.  I was flattered and let her take it.  Again, I do not know the name of the pattern as I got the idea from a FB snip.

This is another traditional block, called Card Trick.  The fun part is the alternating black and white large blocks.  I pieced it a little differently than you might guess, with rows on point.  The black and white sections are pieced as HST & Hourglass blocks rather than separate triangles in each block.  I look at having to match all those points for the black and white triangles between blocks, and this method seemed much more likely to work consistently.  I ended up laying it out on my design wall and piecing it in rows, one at a time.  I really like the effect.  And all the points are perfect!

This is one of two version that I'm calling donuts.  This one uses 4" center blocks, with 2 x 4 rectangles and left over triangles from other projects.  I didn't try to match any of the triangles, I just wanted to use them up, so I broke my usual rule of not repeating.  I have another version with 2" center squares which is a kit and will post it when completed.

This is a very quick and scrappy quilt with 2x4 rectangles framed with 1" strips, alternating with 4" squares.  Using the gray scraps let me use both black and light novelties which I can't usually do in the same quilt.  I also was able to use some brown novelties that never seem to make it into quilts because so many of my quilts are color focused.  It's nice to do really scrappy sometimes and just see how it turns out.