Snails Squared - August Island Batik Ambassador Challenge

I was super excited for this month's Island Batik Ambassador challenge. For August, we all got to play with specialty rulers by Deb Tucker of 180 Studio Designs. I was sent the Square Squared ruler to play with and I couldn't have been happier!

The Square Squared ruler lets you make a basic Square in a Square block with the same precision as paper piecing, but without all hassle of the extra paper. I made 12 of these for the cornerstones in my sashing. 

The inner blue fabric comes from part of the new fabric line William's Garden by Island Batik created by Kathy Engle for Deb Tucker of 180 Studio Designs. You can get precuts of this line now. Yardage will be available around September. The outer triangles is from Island Batik Blenders and is called Cherio - Bermuda

It was super nice to use this ruler instead of paper piecing, which is my usual method for these blocks.  The ruler helps you cut the perfect center square and triangles for sewing and then helps you trim it down for an accurate precise block. And one of the best parts is that I did not have to mess with any paper for these! Such a time saver and I still have perfect units!

If you get the Technique Sheet that goes along with it the Square Squared ruler, it gives you all the math to make the Economy Block, and even the Snails Trail (aka Monkey Wrench) block. I used the Technique sheet to make the 13 Economy Blocks I needed for the alternating cornerstones. For these I pulled some fabulous prints from the William's Garden precut I was sent.

I used the Technique Sheet and the Ruler to also make 16 Snails Trail Blocks. 

The Technique Sheet lets you know what size square to start with, so I made my 4 patches the size needed for the center square. From there on it was easy peasy cutting triangles sizes from the technique sheet, sewing them on, and trimming down.  

Notice the blue triangle in the picture above is not the same as the one below. The blues in the block were supposed to go from dark to light, and I started out light to dark instead.  Had to fix that.  Best to always look at your pattern, even if you made it yourself.  Haha!

I had to add a wee bit of blue from the Tweet collection to go in these because I botched up the color placement, but it fits in perfeclty. 

The Square Squared ruler lets you make blocks up to 6 inches. Well, my snail trail blocks were 8 inches. What's a quilter to do. I thought about re-designing the quilt to have 6 inch snail trail blocks with 3 inch cornerstones, but I wanted a bigger quilt this time.

I sat for a while thinking how I wanted to tackle my 8 inch blocks. I knew I could start out using the Square Squared ruler for the centers, but that would leave me to use my own basic rulers and trial and error to  trim the right triangle sizes for the next rows. That did not sound fun since I knew how easy it was to use the Square Squared ruler because I had already used it to make 25 blocks so easily. 

I decided my best solution was to go out and purchased the next size up Square Squared ruler. It makes blocks up to 12 inches and is called Large Square Squared.  

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Once I got that ruler I finished up my Snails Trail blocks.  

While I was buying rulers, I remembered 180 Studio designs has a Diamond Rects Ruler. I have 40 Diamond Rectangles in this quilt. After seeing how nice it was to make the Square in a Square, I did not want to paper piece these 40 units, so another ruler arrived on my doorstep.

 What can I say, the rulers are so nice. It makes quilting and trimming up so easy and all the pieces fit together perfect, and no paper to remove afterwards. If you want accurate piecing and don't want to mess with paper piecing, these rulers are the way to go.

So basically this entire quilt, was cut out and pieced using Deb Tucker 180 Studio design rulers.

The fabric for the purple diamonds is an Island Batik Blender called Dandelion - Wisteria.

The triangle corners are the Cherio - Bermuda and a deep Purple

Block sizes are:

Snails Trail = 8 inch finished

Diamond Rectangles  = 8 in x 4 in finished

Economy blocks and Square in Square blocks = 4 in finished

If you notice above, the Snail Trail block has a dark purple triangle in the bottom corner, but not in the finished quilt. When I started putting all the pieces together  the dark purple in the Snail's Trail block was too dark next to the purple in my diamond rectangle and I lost the look of the star points I was going for.  So I swapped it out to match the Wisteria in the Purple diamond rectangle.

Simple Square in a Square, Economy Blocks, Diamond Rectangles, and Snail Trails blocks make quite an intricate pattern when all put together.

I quilted it using Hobbs Silk Blend Batting from their Tuscany Collection.  

This quilt measures 57 x 57 so this package was the perfect size! 

As always Hobbs batting quilts like a dream.

For the quilting, I used two different colors of Aurifil 50wt threadThread.

1148  Light Jade and 2420 Fleshy Pink

And of course I used Schemtz Needles.  The Microtex Needles are perfect for quilting Batiks.

Looks great on the porch swing.

The cream colored fabric comes from Island Batik Foundations.  It is called Cake Batter.

I had fun playing with the rulers from Studio 180 Design this month.  I can't say enough good stuff about them. I was generously given the Squared Squared and loved it so much I purchased two more rulers to finish the quilt and I will definitely use them again for other projects!

Some weird lighting in the backyard, gives the colors a whole new look.

Make sure to stop by the other Ambassadors websites this month to see what Ruler they got to play with and what they created!

=^..^=