These have been slowly growing, to the point where Dad's/Mom's top has been taken down and stored on the quilting table (within sight, ever guilt-inducing) so I can enjoy the secondary pattern when the completed (12" raw) blocks are trimmed. There will be 48 blocks total, set 6x8.
About a month ago I unpacked and dismantled the only shirt of my father's I brought home with me. After it was "deboned", I made a very uncharacteristic decision: I'd make a quilt from it. Immediately. I wouldn't fold up all the pieces and stuff them into one of my shoeboxes of less-than-a-yard, fretting further down the line over whether the pieces cut from it were medium, light, dark, tan, brown, green, what-have-you. (I always fall into that trap, being swayed more by the 100% Cotton label than common sense.)
With limited yardage, I figured I'd treat the shirt as a novelty print (ideas for which I've been collecting for some time) and try to find something that would need large segments. That would eliminate yardage-loss-through-too-many-seam-allowances, and showcase the 'Hawaiian' flavor of the shirt fabric. The largest square I could get from the sleeves was 8". So the search began!
Roughly 8 patterns were selected and culled through, until this one stood alone:
So I printed out this picture, cut out the sashing and taped the paper back together, then looked at it as a function of a large middle square (instead of the chisel shapes of the original pattern).
Survived by his wife Lois, 5 children, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Long ago in another century far, far away, the social media platforms were things called "newsgroups". They could be as broadly- or as narrowly-defined as you'd wish. The one I enjoyed the most (and got the best friends from as a result of my participation) drilled down the categories
Recreation>
Crafts>
Textiles>
Quilting
and was known as RCTQ.
One day a lass on RCTQ sent out a distress signal. "Help!", she cried, "I've created volcanoes where quilt blocks should be! I hate, Hate, HATE this project now and wish someone would take it off my hands and out of my life."
So I did.
Mary's obsessed with bookshelf quilts, and while I've never made one, they remind me of a "bug (or canning) jar" wallhanging I made for my mother's Christmas gift in 2008. I just happen to have some pictures on my laptop I can share.
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| Original pattern from which I got some ideas. |
I'm home again, briefly (as in: 'fly in Thursday fly out Sunday' brief), just long enough to do income taxes with my husband and pack for a longer stay in Oregon (i.e. packing a suitcase instead of a backpack). The end of May should give all of us (my siblings and me) a good idea of how to proceed going forward.
I walked into the studio today and saw this on the design wall:
These are the makings of my version of this quilt:
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| "Converging Corners" from the blog "Film in the Fridge" |
It's the building out of the opposite corners that will add the dynamic element to these blocks, once they're all sewn together. In the meantime, they'll quietly wait there on the design wall until I'm back for good, probably in two months.
*Seriously? I've said it before and I stand by my opinion: the squares are split in half by triangles. Shouldn't it be Half Triangle Square (HTS) blocks, instead of Half Square Triangle (HST) blocks?
In light of the events of the past two weeks, the title of my previous post might be construed to mean it was my final entry.
Obviously (since you're reading this), that was not the case. What is the case is that I'm back in Portland, caring for my dying father, and visiting my mother (now living in Memory Care) every other day. I've no plans for posts ('Look! I put in a few more stitches in my hand-sewing project!'), but then again, I've no plans, period. Every day is fluid around here!
See you on the flip side,
Carolyn
