Windmill Angles

I've been working on a project since 2011 with my friend Jaye to cut windmill pieces using the above plastic template (from Come Quilt With Me.)
I wanted to cut a bunch more pieces for us to use so I purchased the Sizzix cutting die for this same block to quickly cut more accurate pieces.  It's the same  4.5" height, but unfortunately it isn't exactly the same angle. So close! This picture shows the template on top of a fabric piece I cut with the Sizzix.

 I made up a sample block to see how it would work out and I think it's too far off to fudge it.

I think this shows a little better how that little difference in the angle works in the block here with them side by side. The one on the left is done with the template, and the one on the right is with Sizzix.
Oh well, luckily the die was on sale and I like this shape as it makes a block with a lot of motion and is easy to piece together accurately.

Tilting At Windmills

More windmills cut out and sent to friend Jaye. Sorry about the title of this post, but I promised last time I posted about this project.

I don't know why it's so fun to take pictures of these stacked-up pieces.

Obviously it's the colors primarily.

 Or maybe the amount of work involved in cutting all that fabric that this tidy stack represents and I'm just glad to have done it. 

Or maybe it's just that I can see the potential for this awesome quilt being created.

Or all of the above.

Working On Windmills

Working on Windmills again, (be nice, I could certainly be Tilting at Windmills here, in fact that will be my title the next time I talk about this project.).
I've been laying all these out, trying different combinations of dark/light, prints/colors, etc. Not sure the pattern interplay between the blocks comes out very well using all prints together like this, so I might have to end up cutting hand-dyed solids to go with all the prints.  I think the blocks that have prints with close-to-solids read much better.  But I probably need to lay out even more to see what the overall effect is with a bigger selection.
So hmmmm.
More thinking about this one is in order.  I don't want to go to all the work of piecing this thing and not even be able to see the pattern you know?  So it might be a matter of laying this out very carefully instead of sewing it all randomly together (which is of course my first and admittedly lazy instinct).  What do you think?

Windmills Stacked

The windmills are getting stacked up! Friend Jaye has been so industrious with cutting them out for me.  And so far I've cut a big zero so far for her.  So that's my project this week.  Now that this stack of new fabrics finally got washed I've got a lot to cut.  And the question still remains what solid color scheme I'm going to use for this quilt.  The first test block I did was a hand-dyed yellow, but I don't want to do a mostly yellow quilt, so more colors will be involved.  I'm thinking it will probably shades of clear-ish colors in my hand-dyes and then I'll group them together by color progression.  

Very First Windmill

Just trying out the template from Come Quilt With Me that friend Jaye and I are using for a our next hey-cut-me-one-of-those-out-of-your-fabrics-when-you-feel-like-it quilts.  She's already cut me a huge stack to work with, so we're on our way. It's a pretty easy block to put together, once I figured out how the markings on the the corner worked.