Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Shaded Four Patch - Alternate Block Arrangements


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As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I realized that I have enough of these green and blue shaded four patch blocks to make another baby quilt, so I had fun playing around with different possible arrangements of the blocks.  Since this block is basically just a slightly more complicated version of a half-square triangle a lot of these variations may already be familiar to you but I think it's fun to see them in a different block!  I'm probably not going to actually assemble this quilt for a while but I'd love to get your thoughts on which arrangement you prefer.  The simplest is to have them all oriented in the same direction as shown above - does this have an official name?


This is how they look in a pinwheel arrangement - the pinwheels don't stand out as much with the squares in there, I think it is actually reminiscent of an hourglass block. 


This arrangement was called Sunshine and Shadows in my Threads of Time book that I mentioned yesterday, but I have seen lots of other things called sunshine and shadows too.  I think if I did this I would arrange it so the diamonds created were each either blue or green and then the squares would be half and half like they are now.


Zig zag... I like how the actual zig zags look but I don't really love the brick shape rectangles that are created in this pattern.  Maybe this is a sign that I really should make a half-square triangle zigzag quilt at some point.


The last two are variations on the barn raising arrangement.  Above it is shown in a square arrangement, with the blocks on point.


This is the same arrangement but in the more standard diagonal variation.  I also played around a bit with how to combine the blue and green blocks in different ways... in the version above I have all the squares in one white diamond band the same color, I also tried it out alternating them which was more similar to what I had done in the first quilt with these blocks, I think both look nice.

So what do you think?  Which arrangement do you prefer?  They all feel pretty traditional to me so I might lean towards the first just to keep in simple... but I guess it depends who I end up making it for.

7 comments:

  1. I like both of the barn raising arrangements. :)

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  2. another vote for the barn raising - square arrangement preferred :)

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  3. its amazing how many variations you get from one little square isn't it! I am with the others - the barn raising definately

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  4. Wow! It's amazing how you can change the look of a quilt! I like the last arrangement best.

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  5. I also like the last one but all are great...amazing how many variations you came up with!!!

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  6. Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts! It's fun that everyone likes the barnraising, that is actually the pattern I had in mind when I first started making these blocks years ago :)

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  7. I like the last one best too but actually I really like the zigzag one..incredible how different they look while using the same blocks. Very clever.

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