Sew Hometown: March

This month we are making the Crosswalk Block for our quilt, and we need to make a total of 5 of them. They are pretty straight forward blocks and is made up of half square triangles and some pieced units that go together quite simply.
I chose to go with a different color for each Crosswalk and to do all the backgrounds in dark brown.
To speed up the cutting, I stacked all 5 contrasting colors on top of each other and cut my strips and squares all at the same time. Than I cut for 5 blocks from the background rather than 1 at a time.
I trimmed my Half Square Triangles using my 4-in-1 Half Square Triangle Ruler from Creative Grids. I love this ruler for trimming these blocks, and we have a tutorial on our Facebook Page demonstrating one of the methods to trim HST's with it.
I am so happy the pattern designers chose to make the "crosswalks" with strip sets, it really speeds up the process, and cuts down on the number of small pieces to cut at the beginning. Be sure to be gentle when pressing the strip sets, it can be easy to distort longer strips when pressing. I like to give it a quick finger press before applying heat.
On the bottom left of the pattern there is a small picture with arrows showing which way to press your seams in the final construction. I actually pressed mine opposite of what is shown, mostly because that is which way my seams wanted to go.
I am having a lot of fun pulling this out once a month and making a few more blocks to add to the stack. I also really like the fact that we are making more than one block each month unlike many Block of The Month programs where the pattern calls for just one block a month. I must confess though that I am almost finished my quilt, because I would like to get it hanging in the store as a sample for the pattern and fabrics.
Have you been working ahead, or are you going month by month?
Come back on Tuesday to see some of the latest fabric arrivals in our store. There will be no blog post next week Friday (March 15) as it is my little sisters wedding that day.
Kayla