Queen For A Day...No A Whole Month

Yes it is my turn as Queen in the Compass Quilters Bee and I am so excited. I've had several months to think about what block I wanted.  I first thought I would do a scrappy trip block, because I really want one those quilts, then I saw the Pink Cross Quilt by Teaginny Designs.  I love the low volume background fabrics with the pink crosses. I decided to make my blocks a little smaller than hers, but I am betting I do another quilt in this size in the future.

Now as much as I like pink I think I want to do lots of colored crosses with the low volume backgrounds.  Now the low volumes can be confusing to some people.  Since I'm going to be adding a lot of my own blocks to this to make a queen sized quilt, I thought I would show you some of the background fabrics I've chosen. The only real request here is that all of the fabrics match on a single block.

Now for my crosses I want wonderful, bright colors, but since purple is my favorite color if you have some I would love at least one block in purple.  I love fabrics by Bonnie and Camille, Basic Grey, Tula Pink, Allison Glass, Cotton + Steel, Denyse Schmidt, Zen Chic and I could go on forever.  I am not as fond of civil war prints, well I actually like some of them but not so much the brown drab ones. These blocks are pretty small, so really large prints may not work as well.  Here are some of the fabrics I've picked to use for the crosses.  When I looked at the photo after I took it I realized most of these fabrics are tone on tone, don't limit yourself to only those.  I don't mind prints at all.

Now to the real meat of this post, how to make the blocks.

Cut

Background
4 - 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 square
4 - 2 1/2 x 1 1/2  rectangle

Cross
1 - 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 square
4 - 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 rectangle

Match each background fabric rectangle to a cross fabric rectangle and sew together using a 1/4 inch seam allowance.  Press towards the cross fabric.

Next line up your rows, as per the photo below.  Just remember that all the cross fabric goes towards the center.  I know that seems pretty obvious, but I laid one out wrong.  Luckily I caught it before I sewed it together.

 Press rows 1 and 3 towards the background and press row 2 towards the cross fabric. Here is the front and back of my test rows.

Now sew row 1 to row 2, and then row three onto rows 1 and 2.  Press these seams to the middle. Pressing this way I should be able to nest seams by flipping the block.

The block should now be 6 1/2 inches square.  Here are a few of my test blocks.  I didn't realize I had the same background fabric on two of them until I was looking at the photos...guess I like that domino fabric.

Now it is time for ya'll to get busy and I can't wait to see what ya'll create.  Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.