Draw your own Sun Block

Posted by Sophie on June 2, 2014 in block lotto community | 4 comments

The size of the arc which is part of this month’s Sunrise block was determined by the size of a sheet of US letter-sized paper to make it easy to print the foundation pattern.

I intended to put together a tutorial this month, describing how to draw your own pattern, so that you could make a sun, half-sun or quarter sun (AKA New York Beauty block) in any size you needed for other projects.  And then, while I was looking for an old photo in my Flickr photo stream, I came across the photos I had taken in March of last year which show how to draw this block. Here’s what the process looks like:

1. 2 Arcs, 2. Folded into quarters, 3. Folded into eighths, 4. Marking the folds, 5. Drawing the sun’s rays,
6. Completed Design, 7. Cut into sections, 8. Foundation piecing on Parchment Paper, 9. Sun section

You can find the blog post describing how I did it: Let the Sun Shine

The Sunrise in this example was part of the tea towel challenge quilt I made in early 2013. To give you an idea of scale, the diameter of the half-sun in our blocks is 10 inches; the sun I created for this quilt was 24 inches wide before it was quilted and washed.

For the lotto, all the arcs should be the same size, but … if you want to use a larger sun–or one with different proportions (a large or smaller half-circle center)–in your mod-mod-sampler, here’s how to do it.

It might seem old-fashioned to use paper, pencil, a compass and ruler, but creating the pattern by hand actually frees you from things that are easily printed or measured.