Block Project - Block 1 - Arrowhead Puzzle

I've always been fascinated by quilt books cataloging blocks. And I have a secret love of sampler quilts, especially the Japanese style ones. If you've never seen any of these quilts you may understand my love affair with them. Here's a link to a slide show of the 2009 Tokyo Quilt festival (not done by me) and you can see some of the intricate work they do.

For a long time now I've kicked around the idea of going through a pattern book and doing all the blocks. But like many of the ideas I have it just sort of has been sitting there. Right after it was published I picked up Jinny Beyer's great book The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns. Again I kicked around the idea of doing a block a day or some such thing, but never got around to it.

Well, the time has come and I've decided to launch a year long project of making blocks. Currently I'm pulling from The Quilter's Album but I may pull from other sources as well.

I'm comfortable with drafting my own blocks, either with Electric Quilt or on paper and since I plan to mix up the sizes of the blocks, that's a good thing!


My first block was drafted on paper. Unfortunately the camera had a hard time with the white paper, so you may not be able to see this very well. I drafted it as a 4 inch finished block. The block is named Arrowhead Puzzle and it is on page 56 of Jinny's excellent book.

Here is the block in various stages of construction.

First after cutting out the pieces:










Next after sewing together some of the parts:











Finally the completed block:











I realize I didn't keep the orientation of the pieces consistent and I'll make sure to do that in the future. This was pieced using some of my hand dyed fabric.