Walking on the Dark Side

As we begin the wrap up, it is time to tackle the "darks"  brown, black, grey.  I'm grouping them together so that you can find the anchor hue that works for you.  I know that people are hesitant to include black and brown in their rainbow quilts, but I encourage you to give it a try.  They lend a certain gravitas and grounding to the brightest of quilts that can really work well.
It is not only the first day of a new month, it is also Tiny Tuesday.  Today's block is called floating stairs. 

 Today's block is on a four by four grid, which means we will be working with 1 5/8 inch strips.  I started with extras from the 2 inch strip b5/8in and trimmed them to size.  I chose 4 different browns with a single background fabric.  You could mix it up differently if you like.

 If you carefully stack up all four brown strips, you can cut them to size at the same time.  Each rectangle is 2 3/4 by 1 5/8

 Here are all the pieces you will need:
4 rectangles of brown 2.75 (2 3/4) by 1.625 (1 5/8)
2 large rectangles of background fabric, also 2.75 by 1.625
2 medium rectangles of background fabric, 2 by 1.625
2 small rectangles of background fabric, 1.25 by 1.625

 Start with the brown rectangles, and stair step them from left to right.  Use the background rectangles to fill in the empty space.  The large rectangles go on the top and bottom on opposite sides.  Then one small and one medium rectangle go on either side of the two brown units in the center.

 Sew the background rectangles to the brown rectangles and press the seams toward the brown.  Sew the rows together in pairs and then sew the pairs together to make your finished block.

There you go!  That one didn't take long at all.