Tumbling Blocks and Hexagons

I haven't quite figured out the best way to reply to comments yet here.. so I thought I would just write a new post.. so much fun that Jackie set up this blog for us!
I'm making two quilts for the challenge.. the first one.. the tumbling block is for my oldest son. He is the most mathematically minded of the two, and will enjoy the optical illusion of the blocks. Although I think I will get tired of sewing all these cubes that look almost the same. It is much more enjoyable for me to make my quilts with a little more variety. But he will really like this. The other son will be getting something totally different.. but I'm not quite sure what yet. Probably more along the lines of a string quilt.. we'll see.

Anyways.. here is where I got my pattern. This old leaflet from "The Remnant Shop" in Sesser Illinois. (you can of course click the pic to see details). Some really fun patterns here.. if any of you would like a copy of them just give me a shout. But as a word of caution, there are no directions how to put the blocks together.. it is just the patterns and the little pictures inside the blocks.



This is the block I'm using.. the diamond. I enlarged it a bit.

At first I was pretty worried. This did NOT look like it was going to work. When I laid the three diamonds out to make a cube.. it didn't seem as if they were going to go together right. I almost stopped and remade the pattern.. thinking it had to be angled differently so that all the corners would match. Pacman. Remember him? ☺

Good thing I decided to sew one together first. It works perfectly! And it really sews up a lot easier than it looks. You just go right up TO the corner of each diamond when you make your seam.. not beyond it. I had to put a little dot on the first corner with a pencil so I'd know where to stop, but after that you can see by your last seam..


Then on the back, I used Cathi's method of pressing the seams. In fact.. I am using a lot of her methods to help me make this quilt.. and I didn't even tell her until now. But she is the Queen of Hexagons.

So as you can see, the Tumbling Block pattern is basically just hexagons. I will sew the cubes together just like you would a Grandmother's Garden. Again.. Cathi has a great tutorial on how to do this. Here is my own diagram of what I want mine to go like. I traced around the "Flowers" with black marker so I could see better how to put it all together..
Of course I'll still have to fill in with some of the cubes.. but I don't think that will be all that difficult. I'll keep you all posted. ☺