Small progress in quilting

Last November, I wrote of an ugly quilt on which I was working. The quilt, originally intended to be for my use when napping in my basement recliner became one for Hunky Husband to use when he naps in his bedroom recliner. Well...that quilt was finally finished in January and has been in use since then. HH tells me it is really warm (with a heavy flannel sheet for the backing, how could it not be?) No one but me cares; but, I removed all of the ties that I had installed to hold the layers together and did, indeed, quilt the layers together. The ties, in that case, served to keep the layers from shifting while I performed the machine quilting. The completed quilt is shown in the photo, below.

 

Some years ago (2006 or 2007?) I took Dudette and Bogie to the quilting supplies store that was about one mile from our house (it closed several years ago). There, they were to pick out fabrics and block designs for quilts that I promised to make them. Have I actually made the two quilts? Silly question. Of course I have not - yet! After finishing HH's ugly quilt, I dug out the design that Dudette had chosen (graphic, below).

 
The graphic is one I made using a quilting design software package that was current, at the time. I've not bought a new software package and it would be a challenge for me to run the old one in Windows 10. I actually made a multitude of layouts using the basic block, and the one shown is the one that Dudette favored. I no longer recall what layout was used on the sample quilt.

In going over it, I realized that the basic block from which the design is formed is a challenging one - one that needs finesse to make look right. I started researching on the internet to see what I could find. It took much time; but, I eventually was able to identify the block as "Mary's Triangle Square" or "Shaded Four Patch" or a few other such names.  This is the basic block, below, in someone else's color scheme.

From Triangle Tricks by Sally Schneider

See the problem? One cannot really sew the plain triangle to the complex triangle, singly. That involves sewing on the bias of the fabric, at a cut edge - which will promptly stretch along the line of stitching! Okay. Fortunately, if one is clever and understands geometry, one can figure out how to make two basic blocks at a time. In that case, one still stitches along the bias of the fabric; BUT, it is not along a cut edge. Since people were making these blocks since long before I took up quilting (2005 or 2006), they have come up with the math that allows making blocks of various sizes. Well, I don't consider myself to be math-challenged; but, it's always nice when someone else saves me the pencil lead to do the math for various sizes. I don't really want to go with the original block size.

Ah, yes, making blocks as large as one can means that fewer blocks need to be made; thus, I've been experimenting. The original pattern for Dudette's quilt (a sample made for a quilting class was hanging in the quilting supply store when we visited) calls for 48 blocks, each a 6-inch square. Yikes! By making each block a 12-inch square, I cut that to 12 blocks. Well...I made a couple of trial blocks, each a 12-inch square. It isn't all that attractive. Currently, I'm looking at making 36 blocks, each an 8-inch square. (I made the two 12-inch squares into a hot-plate holder.)

While we're on the subject, below is another quilt top design formed by the same basic block. The quilt instructions are in a book that I had found in the local library, and later, purchased: Quick Colorful Quilts, edited by Rosemary Wilkinson. The quilt is by Claire Higgott and she named it Moulin Rouge. The photographs in the book show the quilt, nicely, but it isn't spread out; thus, I am using the graphic that Ms Higgott included to show the block layout. Please note that Ms Higgott used 80 of the basic blocks. *Groaning*

Comments

[Ingineer66]

That looks like a lot of work, but the napping quilt turned out very nice.

[bogie]

Holy cow - it's been so long that I had forgotten about that!

You're right, that pattern does not look quite right at that large a size. I'll bet it will look super at the mid-size you are thinking of.