“QAL By the Sea” Block 5 Release!

Hello and welcome to Segment 2 of the QAL by the Sea with the release of Block 5!

Heads or Tails? is designed by Sandra Healy of Sandra Healy Designs. Please visit her blog to download the pattern and read the tutorial.

This is a 12″ x 12″ applique block with a pieced background. Sandra provides easy to follow directions to create the angled lines of the sea background. It creates a feeling of depth and movement as the fish swim back and forth deciding if they are head or tail first!

I appliqued my fish with a blanket stitch on my machine. I’m going to add their button eyes after the quilt is finished. It’s easier than quilting around them!

My tip for applique is if your background fabric is darker than the shape fabric, check first to see how much the background will show through before you add your fusible paper. If it shows to much you can always use fusible interfacing instead, which makes the top fabric less see-through.

For this quilt I am using HITS the SPOT and seeing stars Grunge fabric from Moda and coordinating Kona solids that I have in my stash.

To see this block in a variety of different colors and fabrics as well as get tips for construction, please visit the other QAL hosts:

Becca Fenstermaker of Pretty Piney

Jennifer Fulton of The Inquiring Quilter

Karen Thurn of Tu-Na Quilts, Travels, & Eats

Laura Piland of Slice of Pi Quilts

Sandy Maxfield of SandyStar Designs

Sherry Shish of Powered by Quilting

Prizes!

USA

A Fat Quarter fabric bundle of the Island Batik line Cascadia by Claudia Pfeil.

Quilters Dream Poly batting; a throw size 60” x 60”. Dream Black is a beautiful true black quilt batting that enhances the integrity, richness, and warmth of vivid and dark fabrics and ‘quilts like a dream’.

International

A six month subscription to the e-magazine Make Modern. A magazine for quilters, by quilters, filled with beautiful patterns and articles to inspire quilters like us to make more modern quilts!

A PDF pattern of your choice up to $10.00 from these designers:

Laura of Slice of Pi
Sandra of Sandra Healy Designs

In order to include all eligible participants in our prize giveaway, we are having two separate prizes for each QAL Segment and for the Grand Prize; one for our USA participants and one for our International participants. Due to the demanding cost to ship to Canadian and International addresses, these prizes will be patterns and/or an e-magazine that will be sent in electronic format.

Eligibility for Prize Entry for all Participants:

Segments: Participants can enter the prize drawing by sharing a single photo with all the completed segment blocks on our Facebook group, IG #qalbythesea, or the hosts blog linky party provided at the end of each segment.

The QAL is divided in to three segments of four blocks each.

Grand Prize: Share one photo showing all 12 of your completed blocks, as above. Entry is limited to one per person per prize. You must be 18 years old to enter.

This nautically themed QAL will have twelve 12″ x 12″ mystery blocks. Block patterns are provided by each block designer and are free during the duration of the QAL. There will be 3 Segments with four blocks each. Blocks will be released every week on Tuesday at 8:00 AM EDT with a two week period in between each segment.

All levels of quilters are welcome. Block techniques will vary and include traditional piecing, paper piecing and applique.For a complete list of designer’s and the QAL timeline visit my post here. Please join the community and fun!We hope you join us!

Next Tuesday is the release of Block 6 by Bobbi Bridgeman of Snowy Days Quilting.