Finishing and Pondering

First, the finish:

70" x 91"

Queue

We've all been there: a room with a hint of a suggestion of a loose idea of a line. Nobody's officially in charge, but every person in that room knows exactly their position in the invisible queue. Newcomers are eyeballed suspiciously--will they try to jump ahead? Fat chance of that happening; a gentle correction ("I believe she was here before you") generally keeps things well in (invisible) line. The only time I've heard any kind of disagreement in these situations is when one person suggests, "You were here before me?" and the other replies, "No, no--you go first."

This phenomenon isn't restricted to mere mortals, by the way. As various projects were coming out of Leader-Ender status and into Full-on-Project mode . . .

All the triangle squares for the Lady of the Lake centers, sewn into 3- and 5-square strips.

Lap Lady of the Lake Finished

53" x 66"

 This doesn't look much different from the last time I posted about it (gosh, nearly a year ago?!?), but let me show you what's changed.

A Finish and a Sandwich

This got bound, photo'ed, and tumbled in the drier today, ready for donation to Community First! Village. Diamonds and Pinwheels, finally ready for its new home.

71" x 90"

Diversion

With some personal tumult going on at the moment, it's been hard to get terribly enthused about going into my studio these past few days, other than for the occasional Dump-'n'-Dash. But yesterday I had a yearning to accomplish something by way of quilting (and I needed some quiet thinking time), so I sat down with my rail blocks (which earlier I had already paired up and sewn together) and promptly made a mistake that required unsewing half the misbegotten seam.

I looked around at my options. Did I want to get up and go all the way around the table to boot up the computer and look at the layout I had planned for the rail blocks?

Vanity

I've been idly wondering what vanity I'll carry with me to the Afterlife, and I think it'll be about my intelligence. It's useful, and plenty, and I'm proud of it.

Always have been.

 

Most of the time.

A Lady by any other name . . .

... would smell as sweet? Maybe not.

Regardless, there seems to be many versions of the block pattern "Lady of the Lake". Like the words "decimate" and "enervate", the Lady of the Lake block means different things to different people.

I've had friends send pictures of the blocks they've made. Nann sent a couple, one of which she blogged about here (I love the flashes of red!) In my wanderings about the interwebs, I came across three variations:

Small triangle squares on two sides only.

What most people seem to associate with this block name, and matches the 18 blocks that were already constructed.

Reminds me of a Native American pattern.

Lady of the Lake . . . ish

This morning I putzed around with the various elements of this project. I had 18 finished blocks (measuring at most 10.25" square), 82 centers (measuring roughly 6.5" square), and a theoretical 720 HTSs (measuring 2.5" square). For starters, how many blocks could I complete with those 720 HTSs? (Counts on fingers--720 divided by 16--ah! Forty-five blocks can be completed.)

Then I wondered what various settings are 'out there' for Lady of the Lake blocks, and how is an on-point setting handled?

That's when I started to notice something: the typical LotL block doesn't look like the 18 that I "inherited".

Sample of the 18 blocks on left, traditional Lady of the Lake block on the right.

And then there was one

One piece (out of many), that is!

Left column cut out from picture--really 7 x 9 blocks for a finished size of 70" x 90"

This sews up cuter than it originally looked on the design wall, so I'm glad of that. Having done one, however, that satisfied the itch and I can go on to other designs.

Binding thoughts

I've quilted the sandwich featured in the Gemischt post (I am LOVING my new weightlifting system!) and am in the process of sewing down the binding. I decided to use up ALL my 1.75" binding scraps, acknowledging that would mean having to sew the binding down by hand, but also relishing the fact that those scraps would be GONE, never to be replenished. I figured out some time ago that 1.75" was just a little too narrow for comfort, double-fold-binding-wise, and have been cutting bindings at 2" for several years now. Yesterday I simply decided I'd use up the narrow ones, once and for all.

There were some long strips but LOTS more short strips. I briefly worried about and wondered how to avoid seams in the corners, what with all the connecting of the itty-bitty pieces. Well, DUH Carolyn: plan the corners and put the long pieces there! And as long as I'm planning the corners, I might as well use the dark scraps so the mitered pattern would shine without competition.

Leader-Ender: Lady of the Lake

I'm feeling quite rumbly in my tumbly today (not in a good way) so while Zoe and I relax in my comfy recliner, I'm looking over the Lady of the Lake blocks I "inherited" from a dearly- and recently-departed Magpie. I'd promised myself that if Bonnie Hunter's 2023 Leader-Ender project wasn't something I could make with pieces I'd already cut using her Scrap User's guidelines, that I'd focus on the LotL blocks instead.

I decided it wasn't.