Trip To Paris

OK, not a real trip to Paris, unfortunately. Paris is the name of the colorway for a block-of-the-month project that I am participating in. It's being offered by Quilter's Way, a beautiful little quilt shop in West Concord, Ma. I chose Paris because it is done in colors I wouldn't normally use. Here's a couple of the early blocks to show you.

See what I mean? No color at all. Definitely not my usual style!

We are using this ruler, called the Lazy Angle ruler for each block. Every month we get the fabric for a new block, and the option of also doing an extra block. You know I'm in trouble already when a ruler is involved, right? Since I almost never use a ruler anymore?

And, have I ever told you about my dislike of the "scant quarter inch" used in quilting? When you go to the trouble to buy an accurate quarter inch foot, the whole "scant quarter inch" thing is just annoying. Using your judgement as to whether that is 1, 2, 3 or some other number of threads short of a quarter inch is just asking for inaccuracy. A quarter inch should be a quarter inch.

When I got to the first class, imagine how I felt when the first thing that the teacher said is that not only do we need to use a scant quarter inch with this ruler to make it work, but it has to be a scant, scant quarter inch! What? Are you kidding me? Let's just call it 3/16ths of an inch (or maybe even 1/8th inch), and stop trying to kid ourselves. Are we really that afraid of fractions? Grrr.   

So anyway, between the lack of color, and the scant quarter inch, I am struggling. That's probably why I procrastinated, and ended up doing this month's blocks today, just barely in time for tomorrow's class. Here are the pieces that I cut.

And, the pieces sewn into sections.

And finally, the completed block.

I also did the extra block for the month. There is an extra charge for the kit, but if I do these blocks, I will end up with a large quilt.

Something else I am struggling with on this project is the fabric choices. Or actually, its the color values that is the issue, as the block patterns don't seem to be as distinct as they could be. The other two colorways available have fabric with more distinct value transitions. I guess this is probably harder to achieve using just black and white. I have no idea what the final setting of the blocks will be, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will turn out all right once it's all together.

So, I'm curious. Has anyone out there reading this tried out the Lazy Angle ruler? If you have, I'd like to see what you did with it, and hear your thoughts about using it, especially if you have any tips for making this project easier. And for everyone (and everybun) out there, have a wonderful weekend.