Friday, February 11, 2011

UFO quilt top complete!

(As usual there's an OOPS!)

Patchwork Times UFO Challenge for February is to work on #10 from my list:
10. Orphan Blocks quilt. I want to use the Settings Solutions book.
This started out as another foot dragging, I don't know if I want to project.
It's not that I don't have plenty of orphan quilt blocks to choose from. There's too many mismatched blocks.
Overwhelming in their do-not-go-together-ness.

I kept digging and finally settled on 7 + 1/2 Wedding/Crown of Thorn blocks, 4 leftover star blocks from an exchange in 1998 and a Monkey Wrench made from the same fabric.  I managed to come up with a yard or two of each of the leftover matching fabrics as well.

I studied the Setting Solutions book for the first 4 days of February and continued to dither.  What to do?
The "solutions" in the book seemed designed for pointy star blocks and my abandoned Wedding Blocks spoke to me of circles. 
I decided to try a medallion center using Drunkard's Path.

Have never done this curved pieced block, I might add.  I finally settled on using my quarter inch seam foot and the no pin, just sew method.  A Curve Master foot looks like it might be very useful. If I had one!  
My curved pieces were a little wonky, but they trimmed down to 3.5 inches fairly well.  Once I pressed the wonk out of them with the iron!

I wondered if Drunkard Path could be used as a frame for the individual blocks? Turns out my orphan blocks ranged from 8 to 10 inches. It might have been helpful to realize the wedding blocks were not 12 inches when I decided on 3 inch squares for the Drunkard's Path design. I found the pattern for the Wedding Blocks I thought I had used and it "said" blocks were 12 inches. I never doubted.
I also never measured. My blocks were 10 inches.


WELL...some sides were 10 1/2 - 11 inches actually. Apparently I was very careful to keep all the points of this block "pointy"! Not so much concerned for scant quarter inch seams or block sides of equal size. Probably why I quit this project? Blocks are "framed" in an effort to compensate  (oops!)  But by now fabrics were running out, so a new color was added.

The red print fabric selvage dated it as 1994.  It's ALL gone now. Yeah! Drunkard's Path (or whatever this patch is called!) blew through fabric pretty fast.  I bought 2 yards for the outer edge and border and even that is all gone but for a few inches.

3 comments:

Judy S. said...

Congrats on a nice finish, Laurie. I love what you did with the center!

SaraLyn said...

beautiful!

Karen said...

Your setting is so amazing. I really want to try this Drunkard's Path now.
Read your tatted basket tutorial too; wonderful idea to use the medallion pattern that way. I'm going to have to give it a try.