April Block of the Month

Okay, here I am, running late on the April block of the month. I had actually chosen a block for April some time ago, and then I promptly forgot about it. Yesterday morning in church, Pastor had a reference to Cain and Abel in his sermon, and I felt my short-term memory click into place. The block for April is a traditional one (instructions from Quilterscache) called Cain and Abel. It's another 10" block and I took a pic of the pieces laid out before I started sewing.



You can maybe tell from my patches that I didn't exactly follow the directions in the link. Since I was in a hurry to get the block done, I cut 2.5" strips of everything and used my easy angle ruler to cut the triangles. That's the way I most often make half-square triangles, so that's the fastest way for me. Here's a pic showing how I pressed each row after sewing the pieces together:






I'm a big advocate in putting a little thought into pressing because I like the block intersections to snug up against each other when I sew the rows together (seams going in opposing directions).

If you are making this one, you might want to play with the colors. I had originally made different choices on the colors, but after laying the individual patches out to see how it looked, I changed my mind and this is how the block ended up:

Please feel free to leave a comment, and if you make the block, I'd love to see a picture!

Carolyn