In all the merriment of the holiday season, I forgot to post pictures of week 5 for Bonnie Hunter’s En Provence mystery quilt.  They’re easy enough to combine with this week though – 64 half square triangles; neutrals with dark purples.

This week’s sets are quarter square triangles.  I saw that at 6 this morning and thought well this is going to be easy; I’ve been sewing these in my sleep lately, thanks to the Bible sampler quilt and Splendid Sampler – I’m using these as setting blocks in both.  Hmmm….is Bonnie doing the same thing?  Time will tell!

I have lots and lots of that really dark purple so last week I used a consistent color for the dark purple and if memory serves me correctly, I used just 2 different neutrals.  In my fabric I received for Christmas, there were neutrals, 2 different greens that were perfect for this week, matching thread and I also have some various blues that I’ll use in the Splendid Sampler before it’s over.

I have the 3″ finished quarter square triangle die from AccuQuilt as part of the 6″ Qube set which made this go by really quickly.  In less than an hour I had all 256 triangles cut and ready to sew.  To make sure I had as much variety as possible, I lined up rows of the green, then purple, then neutral.  For each green fabric, I grabbed one of each purple and one of each neutral available.  Then I did the same thing with the next green fabric and so on down the road.  Once I had at least one complete set of every possible match from green to purple and neutral sewn together, I ironed those and made the quarter square triangles and then started back at the start.

The main thing about making quarter square triangles is consistency.  For every triangle that you match up, either have the greens always on the top or always on the bottom as you sew.  In other words, I had all my greens on the bottom and laid either a neutral or a purple on top.  Otherwise the greens won’t be opposite each other when you go to sew the half units together.

Here’s what we know so far:

• 697 units so far leaving 144 to go.  Yellow hasn’t been used yet.
  
• If week 2 combines into stars with week 1, that uses 4 of week 2 for every 5 of week 2.
  Put another way, 100 of week 2 would use 125 units of week 1, leaving 96 units of week 1 for a total of 25 stars.

• Also, if those same stars were used from week 4 with week 1, that would give us 20 stars which would use all of week 4 and 100 of week 1.  But we would only have 96 so these clearly do not both make the same stars.

• Another clue is she said “You may spin the seams on the back side of these units if you wish.  As they do not “nest” with any other unit you may opt for pressing the center seam open, or press it to one side. Your choice.”My guess is week 6 blocks line up  with some of the 4-patch blocks (which are 90 degree angles).
  What are some scenarios where these wouldn’t nest with other units?  Technically that means any other unit we’ve made so far since these are 45 degree angles, although the angle is pretty close to week 2 and 4.