Saturday, July 21, 2012

Snowball Fight! {Week Three}

And now, my favorite part of the snowball...combining it with other blocks to make awesome patterns.

Starring my just-finished Nine-Patch-Snowball flimsie!
{Yeah, the picture is a little wonky. I had some help. Small boy help, not cat help.}

This was a three-yard kit, but I decided to snowball the blocks the pattern said to have as squares. Such a simple swap adds so much more movement to the quilt.
Another great example - the combination of the snowball and the "54-40 or Fight" block in the Tennessee Waltz. This is the very first quilt I wanted to make, after seeing how easy it was on Simply Quilts.

Some other good blocks to alternate with a snowball:
{Economy}

{Shoofly}

 {Nine Patch Variation with HST corners}

{Any star block}

{Same star, different coloring in the flying geese}

In all of these, the size of the snowball corner is determined by the other block. In my Nine-Patch-Snowball, the pieces of the nine-patches are 2.5" unfinished, and so are the snowball corners. In the Waltz, the corners match up against a 3.5" unfinished four-patch.

Week Three of the Layer Cake Snowballs
Make 21 snowballs {and the bonus HST} with the other colored corners, just like last week. But press the seams toward the printed fabric {center} this time.

And square them up. The corners should square at 4" and 6" on your ruler.

5 comments:

  1. wow! Great examples of how to use the snowballs with other blocks. I made my corners with 2" blocks, so my corners finish at 1 1/2" (my blocks are 6" finished). I'm thinking a 16-patch would be a good counterpart.

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  2. Love your snowball quilts and your layercake snowballs!

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  3. How cool to see a lineup of snowball setting variations. I just love your quilts up there!

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  4. Looks like a blizzard going on here :) Wow look at all those wonderful patterns, who knew snowballs were that versatile?

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  5. Love all those "snowball+" ideas - they all look super!! Whoop whoop!!

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