Our group activity, Anita’s Arrowheads, is a GO!

Members should have received a link to the pattern and the Alternate Sizes worksheet in their email on May 27. On the 28th, the information was posted to our Facebook page.

Make as many or as few blocks as you wish, but do try to make at least one to try out this clever and impressive technique!

We have TEN tips to help you be super-successful when making these blocks. This post is about choosing what size block you want to make. If you’re not into the math of it all, you can click HERE to go to Pressing Tips or HERE to go to Other Tips.

The Most Important Tip of All

Starch your fabric very well BEFORE you cut the squares. When the block is completed, all of the outer edges will be on the bias, and nobody has fun with that! Go to Other Tips for a recipe for Quilter’s Moonshine (homemade spray starch) and other ideas.

Tip #1 How To Choose What Size Of Block To Make, and How Many

First, decide what size of project you want to make and how ‘fiddly’ you want to get with the blocks. If you want a queen-sized quilt (92×96”) – do you want to make it from 3” blocks? That would be 960 blocks – that’s what we mean by FIDDLY!

So, let’s say you want to do a queen-sized quilt but you don’t want to be fiddly and end up in a padded room before it’s all done. 92” divided by a 12” finished block equals 7 point something and 96″ divided by 12 equals 8. That would require you to make 8 rows of 7 blocks, or 56 blocks.

Here’s the math

Desired finished quilt width divided by finished size of block equals how many blocks in a row. Round down if it’s a fraction:

92″/12″=7.66 (7) blocks

Desired finished quilt length divided by finished size of block equals how many rows.

96″/12″ blocks=8 rows

How many rows times how many blocks in row equals how many blocks to make.

7 blocks x 8 rows = 56 blocks

Tip #2 Gather Your Fabrics

For each block, you’ll need two squares – one light, one dark (or two squares that otherwise contrast with one another). So in the 92×96″ example, you’ll need 56 light and 56 dark squares.