SAHRR – Round 2 | Plus Signs

The instructions for Round 2 of the Stay at Home Round Robin were released on Monday. This week Emily at The Darling Dogwood asked the quilters to make plus signs! This was an exciting prospect for me because I have a ton of 2.5″ squares leftover from the Scrumptious Hexies quilt that I just finished piecing that are perfect for 6.5″ plus sign blocks.

I had a little extra time on Monday morning before the kids woke up, so I was able to take some time to get my quilty math right. You might remember that I really messed up while calculating the seam allowances in the piano keys last week and I wanted to avoid those same mistakes this week. I even drew little diagrams and blacked out the seam allowances to make sure I was taking everything into account.

And somehow I managed to get it right. I added a background border to bring the block up to 18.5,” which would allow space for two 6.5″ inch plus sign blocks on each border. Remembering to calculate the seam allowances, I figured that I’d have 6.5″ left to fill on each border. I decided to use up that space by putting a 3″ (cut 3.5″ for the seam allowance) rectangle between the plus signs and then two 1.75″ (cut at 2″ for seam allowances at the end of the row) rectangles on the ends of each row. It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me now but it worked so I’m not going to overthink it at this point.

I included the red rose cornerstones in a fun staggered step design. I haven’t been able to sew on the fourth border yet because I ran out of the red rose fabric! I’ve ordered more, but as we all know – things take a little longer right now. I’m hoping it arrives before the next round of instructions are released so that I’ll be ready for Round 3!

I owe Juliann at Chasing Stories a huge thank you for introducing this sewalong to me… it has totally reinvigorated my quilting life! And again – thank you to everyone hosting the SAHRR!