Why I Keep A Blog

Day 242: Even as I am working on another hexagon quilt, I am also cutting the little wedge-shaped pieces which comprise the arcs of Double Wedding Ring. They are smaller, giving me the opportunity to use up some of the fabrics from the bag labelled "Fragments." It seemed like as good a time as any to better organize my fabric stash, so I started pulling things out of one box to put in others. In the bottom, I found several plastic bags with labels saying, "Potato Chip." Now I've made a lot of quilts in my career, and I can generally remember where they've gone if I have some sort of prompt to put me on the right track, but this one was a puzzle. "Potato Chip? Who got Potato Chip?" I asked Merry. "Kevin got Scrappy Stars. The boys got Patience Corner and the Twenty-Year Quilt. Joe and Sharon got hexagons. Anne got the first Cathedral Window. Who got Potato Chip?" (There were others, but those sprang immediately to mind.) "Ah!" I said, "I bet it's in my blog!" And it was. Potato Chip had gone to one of my sisters-of-the-heart. And the funny thing is, I had just been thinking that I had never made a quilt for her. This is one of the reasons why I keep a blog: quilt phenology.

Patty's Potato Chip

Day 296: Yesterday, the Potato Chip Quilt arrived at its final destination, taking my sister-of-the-heart Patty quite by surprise. Oh, I'd baited her with a tracking number so that she could follow a Mystery Box as it travelled across the country, but had given her no clues as to what it contained. The third member of our triumvirate was in on the secret, keeping her lips zipped as tightly as mine. I wanted her to share in the suspense and the moment of revelation. Now both of my "sisters" have quilts I hand-stitched, although Mousie's was pieced by her grandmother about seventy years years ago.

Quilting is one of the ways I've kept sane through the pandemic. When I finish the one currently on the frame about two weeks from now, it will be the seventh one I've made since covid protocols became a new way of life. Of those seven, one was quilted with the sewing machine and one was tied, using buttons at the anchor points, but the other five were all hand-quilted to make the puff pattern visible on the back side (photo, right). This stitching helps stabilize the batting, although modern batts don't tend to lump like the cotton ones of yesteryear. I find hand-quilting very relaxing, even meditative, and I am grateful to the friend who gave me her old quilting frame which has made the job even more enjoyable. As much as I love piecing the bright colours and arranging them, I am truly in my métier when doing hand-stitchery. One hand remains above the quilt, the other beneath it, driving the needle straight down or straight up, striving to keep my stitches uniform and aligned. As my mother often said, "A thing worth doing is worth doing well," and I try to live by her philosophy. Even so, my hand-work is far less meticulous than that of my great-grandmother who, although I barely knew her, has served to inspire me in the art of quilting.

Potato Chip Quilt

Day 262: Another quilt top done, and "Potato Chip" was fun to piece. However, somewhere along the line while I was sewing blocks together, I got two in the wrong order, and didn't catch the error until I was ready to stitch the last long seam. After the air had cleared (it got pretty blue at that point), I picked the last two long seams and two short seams so that I had four sets comprised of two blocks each. I hoped that would be sufficient for a major reorganization. That said, in assembling the blocks, they are laid with the centers turned horizonal and vertical alternately, which added another layer of difficulty to finding a suitable arrangement. Luck was on my side for once, and I was able to put the quilt top back together with no two identical fabrics overlapping one another, but one print meets itself at a corner, thereby providing the first puzzle the recipient of this quilt will want to solve. Where is it? I'm not telling!

At this point in the game, I have three quilt tops completed and will probably back them with white muslin to avoid making a trip to the fabric store. Now the problem is this: I want to start another hexagon top to use up the remainder of the kitty prints, but I don't have a suitable solid for the centers. I may need to make a trip to the fabric store after all.

32 Easy Pieces

Day 246: "32 Easy Pieces" sounds like a beginner's piano album, but that's all it takes to create this ultimate stash-buster quilt block. It could not be more forgiving! There are no seams to line up with each other, no points to match, only strips to be sewn together in straight lines. The Potato Chip pattern called for all the pieces to be the same size, but I found that it was better to make the outer row a little wider and the four corner pieces a little longer in order to have plenty of leeway when trimming to a 12" square. You will need 18 pieces 2 x 3.5", 10 pieces 2.5 x 3.5" and 4 pieces 2.5 x 4". The sets of 10 and 4 will be used in the outer row. Lay all the pieces for the block out on a board and arrange them to your liking. Take a picture, because it's easy to get confused when you start assembling them, but almost the entire block can be chain-processed (i.e., without cutting the thread). Beginning at the center, stitch two pieces together along their long edges with a 1/4" seam. Next, sew the two "top" pieces together along the short sides. Cut the center loose from the chain of sewing and sew on the lefthand vertical single. Now sew the two "bottom" pieces together along their short sides. Cut the center and previously stitched "top" piece off the chain. Add the righthand vertical single to the center. Now your "top" pair is free. Add it to the center, and continue by stitching the two lefthand pieces of row 3 together. Once you see how this works, it's easy to move outward, sewing on sides or tops/bottoms as needed. Ideally, you'll only have to break the thread and start over when applying the final strip to the outer edge, but even if you screw up, it's no more serious than having to start sewing from a new thread. That said, the photo you took at the start of this project is going to come in handy now. It's easy to lose track of whether you're sewing verticals or horizontals together, or which piece was supposed to be attached next. As you can see, the pieces stack like bricks, one brick stacked atop the junction of the two bricks beneath it. To continue this in the full quilt, the next 12" block will be turned 90 degrees. If you don't want to make your quilt entirely scrappy, you could make the row just inside the final row from solid-coloured fabrics. For this project, though, I want to use up the fabrics which have gone into my Pandemic Quilts and start with something new and different.