Welcome back! We are onto week 3 of our Rainbow Rose QAL! First up, congratulations to Bernadette Walsh, who won our second prize of the Quilt-A-Long (QAL) by linking up a photo posted on our Facebook page to last weeks linky. A fat quarter bundle of Tilda fabric from Giddy Goats Craft is on the way to you! You can link up any progress on the QAL every week to enter the draw for our brilliant prizes. For our schedule, see the QAL tab at the top of this page and the last weeks posts, on choosing fabric for your block here and cutting and starting to piece our block here. Over the coming weeks we are going to be exploring the colour wheel and making this block, the Rainbow Rose, in your choice of 2 sizes to make either a 40” x 40” baby quilt or a larger lap or bed quilt 80” x 80”. Prizes! This weeks post is sponsored by The Quilt Shop Tuam, who have sponsored a prize of fat quarters to the vaule of €20 to a lucky winner who links up to this weeks post on piecing the corner sections of our Rainbow Rose. To win this bundle, link up a photo, instagram or flickr image, or a blog post of your progress on the Rainbow Rose block by clicking the blue linky button at the end of this post. Random number generator will choose a winner to be announced next week! The linky will be open until midnight next Tuesday and the winner announced next Wednesday when we move onto piecing the corners of our block! Ready for some more piecing? For the corners of the Rainbow Rose block, we will need approximately 4 prints per corner. You can go scrappy and use all different fabrics or you can use the same prints to make up the spikes on the outer corners as in the diagram below as a guideline if you wish. To make the corners: 1. Take 6 background fabric (BGF) squares 5" for the baby quilt or 10" for the larger quilt. As per previous you can starch the squares before further cutting to make handling the bias edges easier. Cut in half along the diagonal to make 12 triangles. 2. Take 4 coloured squares per corner, 5" for the baby quilt or 10" for the larger quilt. Cut in half along the diagonal to make 8 triangles for each colour (32 triangles in total). Each corner will need: You will have 1 coloured triangle left over - put that aside for the centre star next week. 3. Make the Half Square Triangles. There are 3 coloured HST paired up with background fabric shown as A pieces in the diagram. The remaining triangles are paired by placing two coloured triangles together marked B. It helps to lay them out first and decide on how you want the colours to look for your corner pieces. 4. Place the matching triangles right sides together and sew along the diagonal edge with a 1/4" seam. 5. Press open and trim to 4 1/2" x 4 1/2" for the baby quilt or 9 1/2" x 9 1/2" for the bed quilt. 6. Arrange the pieces in columns as shown: Column 1 is made up of a background fabric rectangle and an A Half Square Triangle. Column 2 is made up of a background fabric square, a coloured square and a B Half Square Triangle. Column 3 is made up of a an A Half Square Triangle, a B Half Square Triangle and the remaining A Half Square Triangle. 7. Sew the columns together pressing open or pressing to the side as you prefer. If pressing to the side press columns 1 and 3 toward the top and 2 towards the bottom to nest the seams. 8. Finally sew the columns together to complete your corner block. 9. Repeat for all 4 colors so you have 4 corner blocks as shown. 10. Trim to 12 1/2" x 12 1/2" for the baby quilt and 27 1/2" x 27 1/2" for the bed quilt if necessary. Exploring the Colour wheel In colour theory, Hue is a term that is used with saturaton and brightness to describe a colour that is displayed on your monitor (HSB) or sometimes Hue, Saturation and Luminence (HSL) or sometimes lightness. In paints and pigments, hue is taken to mean the pure form of a colour on the colour wheel without any white or black added to it. Add white to a colour and you get a Tint. Adding white to red gets you pink! Adding white to a hue tends to lighten it and de-saturate it – think Pastels. Colour schemes using tints usually evoke a feeling of softness and gentleness. Add black to a colour and you get a Shade. Shades tend to darken and can result in rich, intense colours. Think of a rich deep garnet ring or a dark blue sapphire! If you add white and black together you get grey. Adding grey to a hue gives you a Tone. Think dusty colours. I must admit fabrics with a lot of grey tones in them are the least used in my stash, so I think I will try harder to get them into my next project! As you have seen in our first weeks post on selecting fabric, in order to get colours to blend going around the colour wheel, you need to include some tints, tones and shades. Pink is a tint that has a colour name all to itself. I like to think of light blue as sky blue or baby blue. In painting, an artist quite often chooses a dominant colour and an accent. When choosing your next fabric pull for a future project, try a palette of blenders in your dominant colour and remember to add a shade to give some richness, and an accent colour to add a bit of pop! Remember to win this fat quarter selection from Quilt Shop Tuam, link up a photo, Instagram/ Flickr image or blog post by clicking on the blue button below: Thank you to all our very generous sponsors. Please share the love and visit our sponsors by clicking on each of the photos below! 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