trapezoid

During our Voices in Cloth meeting this weekend, I sat next to a fellow quilter Marti who complemented me on my Inner City Kids quilt.  She said she saw it at PIQF 2011 and took some pictures so she could look at it in detail when she got home.  Looking at a close up shot she asked me if the pattern is a trapezoid?  A trapezoid?  Well yes I guess it is. Since the meeting started, I couldn't fully answer her question.  

So to Marti the full answer is the trapezoid is half of a hexagon.  To me this is another hexagon quilt.  The inner city block is 3 hexagons that form a Y.  To make the 3 hexagons, you choose 2 each of light medium and dark fabrics.  You sew 1 light to 1 medium, 1 medium to 1 dark, 1 dark to 1 light.  Then you take your hexagon template and position it in the middle of your sewn pieces and cut out your hexagon.  

This is a close up shot of the block.  Can you make out the Y with the light medium and dark forming the block?  It was easier to cut out 2 hexagons at a time, so there are 2 matching Y blocks.

I started off hand piecing the hexagons together.  The pieces were so small that it was hard to machine piece them.  But when my wrist started to hurt, I slowly machine pieced it.   Thank you Marti for the complement.  Your question is the very reason why I wanted to make this quilt.  I saw the block when I was looking at the pictures from the Yokohama quilt show and wondered how the block was constructed.  Just like you I figured there must be an easier way then cutting out all those trapezoids.  I hope you try your own Inner City block, but be warned it is challenging.