Thursday, April 30, 2009

Floral Cactus Pots in May

Kathie's Cactus Block #2April showers bring May flowers . . . so for the month of May, we'll be making scrappy Cactus Pot blocks using at least one floral fabric. Kathie made this block.

Our 6 inch block pattern: Cactus Pot Quilt Block Pattern.

This quilt block design was first published as Cactus Pot in the Oklahoma Farmer Stockman, on January 1, 1930. It appeared in a monthly column that was part of that publication in the 20's and 30's called Good Cheer Quilt Patterns.

In May, we'll be going almost completely scrappy, with only a couple rules for fabric selection:

1. NO WHITES (solids or WOWs), NO CREAMS, and NO BLACKS (solids or BOBs). You MAY use fabrics that have white, black and cream in them with OTHER colors
2. At least ONE of the three fabrics you use must be a flower print of some kind.

You can use your fabrics in multiple blocks as long as none of your blocks match.

Your flower print may be used as background, the "cactus" or the "pot." You may use more than one Flower print. Your Flower might be a bright print (left-over from Terri's churn dash swap last year), an Asian print, a 30's repro, a soft color-wash print . . . anything goes. Pull some flowers from your scraps, then chose some more scraps to go with them and have fun putting together interesting combinations. Use this month as an opportunity to clean out your scrap bin or to go shopping for some fresh new flower fabrics (and fabrics to coordinate with them!) The possibilities are endless . . . for a bit of inspiration, here are some of the blocks made by sneak peekers, Caroline, Ginny, Jill, Kate, Kathie and Rho.


This basket-style block will look great in on-point settings. I've been watching Wanda work out a wonderful setting for some great scrappy batik blocks on her blog, Exuberant Color. She used a popular lotto block from last year, double 4-patch, as her alternate block. Here's a photo of her quilt top in progress.



Clinking the photo will link you to Wanda's blog article about choosing fabric for setting triangles. As you can see, her color palette is more controlled than our scrappy blocks this month, but I think there's definitely a good setting idea here.

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