It's a Patchwork City, Group 1

I bought Patchwork City: 75 Innovative Blocks for the Modern Quilter by Elizabeth Hartman a while ago and I have finally come around to getting started on it.  Craftsy was having a sale on a mystery fat quarter bundle from Freespirit Fabric, so I bought that and I have started.  I am also getting started on a small wall quilt for the office using Robert Kaufman's Color Union, so I decided I would use some of these prints as accent pieces in all of the blocks.  I am planning on making all 75 of the blocks in the book, so this will not be a quick project.

Here are my first three completed blocks: Post Office Box, Intersection and Kiosk

I think all of the colors are looking good and the Color Union prints really pop.  I also fussy cut the ship in the kiosk block.  I had a few issues putting together the intersection block.  The book came with templates and two ways to get them.  There were paper templates in the book that could be traced but there is also an option to download a PDF that can be printed right on freezer paper.  I elected the second choice.  I printed the template out, cut it with my old rotary blade and ironed it onto my fabric.  The directions say to cut out the pieces adding a 1/4 inch seam allowance on all sides, so that is what I did.  When i was done piecing the hourglass part of the Intersection block, the directions said it should measure 4.5 inches and came in at 4.25.  I checked my seams and everything looked good but I decided to make another just in case.  The second time I was very careful to make sure all of my cutting was correct, I took extra time lining up my corners and everything.  I pieced it all together, took it to the iron and measured it again......4.25 square again.  I am guessing there is a printing error or there is something special that needs to be done when adding seam allowance to a triangle.  I decided to just go with it and put the rest of the block together.  I started asking around and it turns out that I am not the first person to have some of these issues.  I decided I'm going to stick with it because I already bought the fabric and I can hide some of the differences with the final quilt layout.  I'm still looking forward to completing this quilt and I will keep you all updated on the progress.

The next three blocks will be:  Porch, Meow, and City Hall...

-Adam-