Scrappy Rocky Mountain Puzzle Blocks

My simple variation on the classic Rocky Mountain Puzzle quilt block.

Do you ever feel drawn to particular colours?  I definitely do! Sometimes it's due to seeing a wonderful combination of colours in a fabric or flower or scene in Nature, that has me wanting to create with a similar colour palette. 

 My latest project is directly inspired by the checkered garden block quilt (shown above) that I made a couple of years ago.  I completely adore all those warm colours together and the desire to work with this palette again over took me this autumn. 

Fortunately, plenty of scraps from making this quilt meant that I could dive back into playing with those warm, spicy colours for some more scrappy block making. I chose to use the fabrics with small scale prints for these small scrappy blocks.

Just enough space in front of the dining and living room windows for my sewing table and machines (after moving the dining room table and relocating some chairs).  This will be my sewing space until our next move.

Since our move at the beginning of October, I had planned how to set up a sewing space in our new rental home and although it was nearly a month before I could bring it about, it was well worth the wait. Once my vintage Featherweight was unpacked, I immediately grabbed my scraps and began sewing a variation of the rocky mountain puzzle block!

These scrappy little blocks are 4.5" unfinished, so that means the half square triangle units are 1.5" and with ten of them in each block, that's a whole little of tiny sewing and trimming!  I paid attention to the value of the colours I paired in each block to make the shape contrast to the background (with a couple of exceptions ;o). The scale of the block allowed for plenty of fabric mixing, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  This block would make a fabulous quilt!

I settled on a 5 x 5 grid of blocks to make a pillow cover to coordinate with my checkered garden block quilt and I decided to add a border around the blocks to finish the simple layout.

Free motion quilting on my Janome 8900MC completed the pillow front and added lots of texture to these tiny blocks.  I couldn't be happier with the results!
 

Small scale prints work best on blocks this small.

Corduroy in a rich plum colour has been selected for the pillow back, now to decide on whether I will add piping and a zipper to finish.