8 winding staircase block (and a mini-tutorial).

This weekend I put together a block for Jan of Daisy Janie.  Are you all familiar with her gorgeous organic fabrics?  Shades of Grey is one of my favorite fabric lines ever... I need to buy some soon!  Anyway, Jan chose 10 quilters to make blocks for a Project Linus quilt made of her first fabric line, Geo Grand.  She sent us each eight charm squares to be made into a finished block, any size, any style.

It was a bit of a challenge for me to come up with this block.  I always feel so limited when using charm squares, simply because of the 5" length/width restriction it puts on any design.  I also almost always incorporate solids into my designs, so making a block with all prints was a little out of my comfort zone.  I did my best to alternate the brown and white prints with the colored ones throughout the block as places for the eye to rest.

I was inspired by the shapes in the Hip Squares print, which kind of reminded me of an aerial view of a winding staircase.  I fussy cut one of the squares for the center of my block.  

Then I cut out several strips of each fabric (3/4", 1", 1-1/2", 1-3/4", and 2-1/4") and sewed the equal sized rows together for all but the largest strips. 

I pieced together the strips in a log cabin, using smaller strips in the center and cutting larger widths from each log building out from the center.  It was very much an improvisational block, I just kept sewing strips together and building it out until I ran out of fabric strips in each appropriate size.

I hope you like the block, Jan!  I'm looking forward to seeing the finished quilt.  Thank you so much for the opportunity to make a block for you!