Christmas Curves

Had a great time taking the Metro Rings class I mentioned in my last post.  I managed to finish four blocks:

The pattern uses Jenny Pedigo's "Quick Curves" ruler.

You can see from the photo that the ruler has a curved opening to guide the rotary cutter to make curved cuts for piecing.  What started out a strip sets of Christmas fabrics, ended up like this:

You also use the ruler to cut background squares:

What I thought would be the trickiest part is sewing the curves.  Jenny's method uses No pins!  Sounded scary, but it actually was easier than I thought.  The curves are pretty gentle, and it wasn't too hard to get them to cooperate.

This was the class sample:

By the end of the class, everyone had made up at least a few blocks.  I took a few photos to share, but between the harsh flourescent lighting and my rinky-dink camera phone, the quality is not that great.  Please adjust for that.

First up is my buddy Linda's blocks.  She went with an Autumn theme that really made me think of the Thanksgiving table:

Another student went with a black and red Asian theme:

We also had a yellow and gray combination:

and a bold black and white on a blue background:

Our instructor was working on another version of her own,  using solids that we described as "watermelon colors"

Always fun to spend a day in the company of quilters.  I'm pretty excited about getting the rest of the blocks sewn.