RUSewing

My neighbor gifted me with about 45-50, 6.5"squares of beautiful various colors of jewel toned batiks.

At first I thought of making the 10 Minute block, but thought maybe other blocks would be better. (I am a Beginner-Intermediate quilter and cannot use a rotary cutter b/c of health)

notfromheresc

I would make HST (half square triangles) out of them. Layer with either black or white or cream - draw a line from corner to corner on the lightest fabric and sew a 1/4 inch to each side of the line - cut along the solid line and press open. Viola HST then sew together in a pinwheel pattern or all one way or whatever. enjoy them!

Holice

Since you can't use the rotary cutter then use scissors to cut them apart. This might appear to be a dumb answer but I recently was doing blocks of half square triangles and would jump up to cut them apart at the cutting table with rotary cutter. I decided to sit at the machine and cut them apart with scissors. It was much easier, quicker and more accurate.....than the rotary cutting. If the squares are all acccurate to begin with then just do the HST and arrange in pinwheels or other blocks that use the HST.

TanyaL

Think carefully. The jewel tones are the most beautiful of all the colors. They can radiate light and give effects that you can't get from anything else. Why don't you spend time arranging them on your wall before you cut them to any other shape? You might want to feature the celebration of color and not concentrate so much on a set pattern. I almost envy you having the joy of working with these.

sewnbug

That was really nice of your neighbor. I would use black with them to really set off the colors in HST.

Greenheron

Ditto.

irishrose

Google Carpenter's Star. Those are almost perfect in size.

wolfkitty

I agree with sewnbug! Put them together with black to set them off. HST's or Chinese coins.

DebraK

posted in wrong thread. Sorry.

kathdavis

Putting them with white will really make them pop.