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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Ocean Wave quilt block

Ocean Wave
April 6, 1933-Nancy Cabot didn't have much to say about the Ocean Wave quilt block.  Just that it was "symbolic of the blue of the sea and the perpetual movement of the ocean waves" and that it came from "a seaboard town of Maine."

I wasn't going to make this block because of the small pieces of a 6" block but then I saw this quilt by Bonnie Hunter (below) saying she made 6" blocks!  But after reviewing how she made her quilt, it's actually a 12" block when made the way Nancy Cabot shows!  Bonnie's half square triangle units finish at 1 1/2" and Nancy's at 3/4"!


You can follow Bonnie Hunter's tutorial by clicking here if you want to see how to make this quilt.

The Ocean Wave block can be found in BlockBase as #2628 just as Nancy Cabot drew it.  I'm not crazy about how that block goes together so I redrew it so I could make four identical pieces as shown which makes more sense to me and is easier.

I paper pieced this unit because I find it to be easier when working with tiny pieces.


 Each of these four units has four paper pieced sections like this-


You can download the paper piecing templates here.










This block can be made from 3/4" finished size half square triangles using your favorite method to make those units and adding single triangles made by cutting a 1 5/8" square diagonally to get two of the single triangles.  The large background triangles are cut by cutting a 2 3/8" square diagonally.  That's too much cutting for me when I can just paper piece!

There is a tutorial here for a 16" block that might be helpful if you are having a hard time understanding what I am trying to say about the single and background triangles or if you want to make a larger block.

Tomorrow-Indiana Puzzle



1 comment:

  1. Oooh - I just love the idea behind your blog. I am really interested in quilt block history for my work and have so enjoyed looking at what you are doing here. xCathy

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