Day 2 of "Seven Days of Quilt Cards"

Good Afternoon, Today is the second day of my series "Seven Days of Quilt Cards".
I'm going to begin by showing you how I put these together,

You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.
I start with a piece of graph paper. Because for this card I was using 3/4" patches and 5 squares to a row (25 patches) I need to draw a 15 X15 square block. (3/4" patch =9 graph squares or one patch,)

I've already decided on my color choices so I've punched out a few patches and started to lay out a pattern.

Note that some of these squares I've cut in half diagonally. I do that using a small pair of sharp paper snips.
.Here's a pic of my finished layout. Now the fun begins.

Once I had a layout of the quilt block I drew a small cheat sheet (one graph square equals one patch) Now it's time to start gluing down the patches.

The important part here is staying within the square you've drawn on your graph paper. Each of the punched patches will take up 9 of the graph paper squares (3 across by 3 down) I like to work from left to right laying one patch at a time.  It's easier to put the glue on the graph paper rather than on the patches. I lightly fill in the first of the 9 graph squares and lay the first patch so that it fits exactly in the corner. It's more important that your patches match up to the graph lines rather than to the next piece. This keeps your block square.

After all your patched have been glued down allow it to dry. Then using a paper cutter trim off the graph paper and just a sliver of the block all at once to make it even. Your block should measure between 3 X 3" to 2 7/8 X 2 7/8" without any graph paper showing like in the pic above. I mounted this on a piece of matching cardstock measuring (1st layer plum) 4 1/8" X 4 1/8" and (2nd layer green) 4" X4".

Here is the finished card.

Clear as mud right? I picked one of the harder cards to show you the instructions. If you want to try this but it seems overwhelming  you can make a 9 patch square with a 1" square punched patch.. You can copy the center of this card for that, just remember that a 1" patch takes up 12 graph  squares.

Here's a link to a good starter block http://www.quilterscache.com/B/BabyBudBlock.html

They have tons of free patterns here http://www.quilterscache.com/QuiltBlocksGalore.html

If you make a card or already tried this I'd love to see it. Please email me at Shop4therapy.gmail.com

See you tomorrow when I'll be posting a new card and pics of the blog candy, Jana