Old Tobacco Road!

~A Quiltville Mystery Quilt!!~

Building Blocks!
 
The first units are ready to put together!

The first picture shows the main unit.  Two 4-patches and a pinwheel! You need 82 pieced bricks shown in the above left.

The next picture shows a cropped brick!  Notice that the 4 patch and the pinwheel next to it are all facing the same way as in the full sized pieced brick, but on the far right end, we have a split 4 patch unit.  You need 6 cropped bricks just like this.  Watch the way your pinwheels turn, and the direction the darks are going in each 4 patch. Consistency is important here!

This little piece has a 4 patch and a split pinwheel unit. You need 4 of these.

This is where I'm going to talk to you about pressing.  This is where you might see that it doesn't work to always pinwheel the seams on the back of a 4 patch, or on a pinwheel block towards the dark.  If you "always" press towards the dark, the seams might not butt up if you do. On the 4 patches, I pressed towards the dark on the pairs, but when joining the halves together to make the 4 patch, I press to one side. Sometimes, depending which direction I'm laying the darks in the 4 patch to make the design, I might want to flip the 4 patch around so that the purple (or whatever color) is not in the top position, but where the red is.  That is going to change the direction of the second seam in the 4 patch.  Because I press to one side, I can simply finger press that seam back the direction I need it to go.  I want the seam between the split 4 patch or split pinwheel in the units above to butt together when I join them to the 4 patches, and that means I need to be able to change the direction of the pressing occassionally, depending how I lay out the scrappy units. This is why I am not a stickler on which way to press. I need my options open. I don't stress it to much. Sometimes it requires "GASP" twisting a seam and mashing it flat! Not very often, but sometimes. And do I care? NO.  I'm having stress free fun, and that's what this is about for me.

If you ARE a pinwheeler with your seams, try pressing all the 4 patch seams towards the dark, and all the pinwheel seams around towards the light. That just might do the trick for you.

So there you have it!

Full Pieced Bricks: Make 82
Cropped Bricks: Make 6
4-patch & Split Pinwheel Brick: Make 4

Step 4 will have us in lay-out mode! YEAH!!!