Tutorial Tuesday–Make your own Kaleidoscope blocks

I just LOVE kaleidoscope blocks!

Do you??

You can make some cool layouts and quilts with kaleidoscope blocks!

First search for “Kaleidoscope” by notecard, under BLOCKS library

You’ll see these

Add one to sketchbook

Now WORK on block and find the block in the sketchbook and double click to work on the block

Leave the block at 12” but change the snaps and graph paper to 24 each

and turn on the Graph paper cells

Then you’ll see a grid instead of dots in the background

then find a spot on the lines that intersects with the grids and start there to draw a line to another point.

Like this

I found that the 2 1/2” mark on the side matched up and I drew a line to the top right.

Then repeated all the way around like this

Starting at the same point I then drew a line going the other way and repeated that around.

What about connecting those new points to each other

If you go to the COLOR tab

and back again to the EASY draw tab it adds the connecting points.

Add those new points to the TIPS again of the original block

Add another “square” in the middle and also connect more points

This may be too much so go back and forth between the color tab and easy draw and now remove some lines

Let’s try coloring it!

( I like solid colors for this)

and a layout where I mirrored every other block

Or different colors

Now you could also start with a pinwheel block and modify that

The block’s default size was 4” so I started at the 1” mark and connected the middle points

then connected the corners

Keep going and color it- a more symmetrical look

When you go to print it, it doesn’t look good!

BUT you can number and section off everything yourself!

after all this block started like a pinwheel so it can be printed like that too for foundation paper piecing.

Click the START OVER button

Click the sections of the triangle and click GROUP

repeat for all 8 triangles, I try to click in the same order (from the inside and outward)

It will look like this- the pinwheel shape!

click the PREVIEW button

You’ll see it made more sections, but that’s okay, that’s just how this one worked out….

I ALWAYS click the preview button when printing FPP, because it often puts the shapes all on top of each other like this.

Click the MOVE button and move the pieces to the 2nd page to give them some space, then PRINT.

If you Don’t print and go back to the preview screen you’ll see this.

still looks much nicer than before

when you save the file to maybe print later, the sections will stay this way.

Have you made your own kaleidoscope blocks or quilts from scratch like this? Link up and show