March – Improv Arrows

Our March block lotto is really fun and easy improv arrows!

We’re using a grey solid for our backgrounds, either Kona Medium Grey or Northcott Colorworks Smoke (#92 at fabricana). Remember the guild logo colour card we gave you in your member goodie bag a while back? It’s got a sample of Kona medium grey in it, so you’ll be able to dig through your stash and see if you have any unlabeled greys that will work.

For the arrows, please use any brightly coloured tone on tone that you have in your stash.

  

Step 1. Cut a strip of the coloured tone on tone fabric 1.75″-2.25″ wide. I cut mine WOF long, but you won’t need the full length. Cut a piece of background fabric approx 9″ x 9″, though it can vary a bit. Some of my arrows are longer, some are shorter, some of the backgrounds are wider.

Step 2. Cut a line down the centre of the background fabric. It can be straight or angled, it’s up to you.

Step 3. Sew the tone on tone strip into the centre of the background fabric. Press your seam allowances into the arrow and trim the excess from the top and bottom of the background.

Step 4. Remove the upper right corner at an angle. Try to start your cut in the centre of the tone on tone strip (the shaft of the arrow). Remove the triangle you cut off and discard.

Step 5. Cut a strip of the background fabric the same width as your tone on tone strip. Depending on the length of your background strip, you might need two, one for each side of your arrowhead.

Step 6. Sew the background strip and the arrow strip together along the short ends.

Step 7. Sew this strip onto the angled cut you made.

Step 8. Press the block and trim off the upper left corner. Try to match up the angle of your two sides of the arrow. Discard the triangle from the corner, but use the length you removed for the next step.

Step 9. Repeat Step 6 to make another strip set for the second side of the arrow head. Sew the second strip onto the background, and try to make your two sides of the arrowhead close to the same length.

Step 10. Trim the sides and the top of your arrow.

Step 11. Now we’re going to calculate the size of the triangles we need to fill in the corners of the block. This doesn’t have to be exact, you can guesstimate. If you look at the black arrows in the photo below, you’ll see that one is at 6.5″ and one is at 7.5″. Average that out and go with 7″.

Step 12. Cut a square of background fabric 7″ x 7″ and cut it in half diagonally.

Step 13. Take one of the halves you cut and sew it onto the right side of the block. You want to have a little bit of background at the top of the arrow, so try to line up the edge on the side and go past the arrow at the top.

 

Step 14. Trim that excess off the top and sew the second triangle onto the left side.

Step 15. Press your block well and trim it square. If one of your triangles is too small or the angle is off, and you can’t make it exactly square without cutting off a lot of the block, try adding another piece of the background to the corner to fill it in. (i had to do that on the blue block at the top of the page)

Don’t worry about trimming it to an exact size, just square it up. Because we’re using similar shades of grey background, whoever wins the blocks will be able to piece them together and make some bigger as they need to.

 

Now go make more arrows! Once you get the hang of them, each block can be made in 15 minutes or less. The more you make, the better your chances to win them all!