Rail Fence - Shoo Fly - Shoo Fly Variation - Card Trick - and the Bear Claw

First up, Rail Fence. Pretty straight forward with four strips sewn together and then cut to the squares and arranged to almost look like they are going around the block. When it came time to quilt, I chose to do a free motion flower. I bought these awesome pens from Nancy's Notions that write on fabric and iron off with heat. No water needed. It worked so well. With the quilting I used some geometric design and some were drawn out first. Others I tried without much planning at all. I used a variegated teal on the whole quilt.










Shoo Fly was next. To be honest when the pieces all fit together and the block was done, I was a little less than impressed. I am not sure but I think that my preference is more than two colors in my blocks. But, using the geometric design in the quilting made me really love it in the end!













The third block I put together is a variation of the Shoo Fly block in that the corners are the same but changing the side squares to include a third color and keeping the middle square teal it looks totally different. I mixed some squiggles and some geometric quilting for this one. Once again, the quilting makes it pop!








Wow, was this one ever fun! It was serious concentration and when you put together the Card Trick block you really need to pay attention or like me, you will have to take out and move around and re-sew A LOT! It won't be as hard the next time though. It was totally worth the extra effort because this is one of my favorites. I quilted with little stems in the teal triangles. I thought about a little stitch in the ditch which might have been good to keep the middle tacked down.







Presenting...the Bear Claw. Matthew can identify this one anywhere. He was in the living room past bedtime one night not wanting to go to bed. I turned on YouTube and looked for some instruction on a few of the blocks I was ready to do next. Figuring he would get up and head to bed, my plan backfired and he stayed up a little longer watching tutorials for each block with me! A week or so later when I was laying all the blocks out he was naming them as I put them down on the floor! I think it is cute. For the quilting I squiggled down the teal stripes.