Happy New Year and Back to the Drawing Board!

Happy New Year everybody! Hope everyone enjoyed the break over the holidays.  I had a wonderful time with family and friends and the only bit of sewing done was demonstrating how to use my first sewing machine to a friends daughter, (I gave her my Lidl Lervia machine that I made my first 4 quilts on!)  And I got a thank you present in return - hopefully she'll have great fun with it - she is certainly off to a great start!

In other news, it's not been a complete avoidance of sewing related activities.  I am on the committee for our branch of the IPS (Irish Patchwork Society) so one of the things I'm charged with doing is providing articles for our society newsletter (published 4 times a year).  Every quarter, I write up the branch news and one other article that might be of interest to our society which is a mixture of quilting styles and experience.  This month I have been working on writing about the Drunkards Path block.

I think it has been on my mind as I am slowly getting to complete bee quilts from blocks received in past years and before Christmas made this little baby quilt and I am still thinking of the last 5 blocks as tall flowers!

For the article I have been exploring the shape of the basic unit of the Drunkard's Path.  It is basically a quarter circle pieced into a square shape.  The traditional ratios are 2/3 or 3/4 circle to background square.  A modern approach to the block is to use a full circle to background square as a finished unit in the block.

So I've been playing around with it a bit and love how 1970's the flower or vintage bloom block looks just by changing the ratio of circle to square. And adding a bit of colour gives a fun repeating pattern!

I am considering this as a block for Modern Irish Bee this year.  It's not my turn until later on in the year but we are going big this year with a maximum 18" block and this bloom block is a 4x4 patch construction and easy to size up to 16".

 

The wandering path home is a little bit lost in the first design but I think this one with a half drop repeat keeps the feeling of the traditional block design (supposedly named for the weaving way a person with too much of the merry stuff on him takes on the way home!)

And if they go by A&E on the way (kidding!) this exploded block with the 2/3 ratio gives a nice fractured approach!

Am I being a bit too cruel in asking a bee group to make a curved block?

To get that modern full curve look, it is easiest to make bigger and then trim back the excess on the outer piece to only the seam allowance after you have made your unit.  Allowing a good bit extra above and to the right of the blue lines helps handle the piece easier when adding on the convex curved piece so be generous with your templates!  Trim the excess away as the last step leaving only the seam allowance on both sides.

I learned this the hard way when, after resizing this design to a much smaller dimension than in Angela Pingels book : A quilters Mixology, I had a devil of a time getting the pieces curved and flat.  I ended up hand sewing this little guy in the end!

There is a cheat to making the Drunkard's Path units using applique.  Sew a circle onto a background square (reverse applique or mono-filament thread will hide the stitches) and then cut into quarters giving 4 units.  Trim afterwards to whatever ratio you want!  Maybe this could be a way to make the blocks Bee friendly?

Of course, having started to play with shape and colour and having more than enough for my article, I should have stopped but just couldn't resist a few more designs.

I'm quite liking this rope effect - can't see myself making that many curved pieces though the blocks are quite big 30" in this one below.  A bed quilt, Granny square style, in an ombre effect anyone?

The article for the magazine is now written and I need to get on with finishing those UFO's from last year, so this will have to sit for a while.  I really enjoyed this process though and this is what I had been missing towards the end of last year.  Just having fun and playing with shape and colour!  2017 is off to a good start!

Linking up with Let's Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday and Design Wall Monday!

When you are on a roll… Finished Sewing Machine Cover

Having had so much fun quilting paw prints this past week, I decided to take a leaf out of Jasmine’s book and  keep going to finish up a project or two. Dog Gone Cute is done but I'm saving the finished item for my turn on the blog hop next month.

Remember this sewing machine cover that I made way back in March? It’s based on the Ornaments quilt from Angela Pingel’s book called A Quilters Mixology: Shaking up curved piecing. I can’t believe its been sitting covering my machine, pin basted and unfinished all this time!

So feeling the quilting groove this week, I decided to have a good look at it and come up with something not a stipple or a wiggle.

When I first saw this pattern using the Drunkards path block, it reminded be of Tales from the Arabian nights and Aladdin’s lamp. So I wanted something swirly in the lanterns a bit like smoke.

For the background I had no idea and I guess the pattern being called ornaments made me thing of strings of pearls so I went with straight lines and circles.

My favourite thread is Aurifil 2410, a very light pink – it just seems to go with everything from piecing to quilting so I used that on top and tried hard to stitch in the ditch – disaster – but everything else went ok!

I marked the straight lines with some chalk and free motioned them adding in some circles every now and again trying to stagger them a little. 

I thought about adding ties to the sides but in the ended didn't bother as my machine stays put here most of the time and I'd only be tying and untying for no reason.  For the past months I've just been laying the cover over the machine when not in use and that's worked grand to keep the dust off as is.

I decided to bind it in the lemony yellow I used for the smallest lantern as its a happy colour compared to the purple.

And here's the finished cover, done & dusted.  I could get used to finishing projects one after the other.  Linking up to the Friday finishes!

WIP Wednesday : A Finished Flimsy

Do you remember the story of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves? It’s the one where the cave of hidden treasures only opens when you say Open Sesame! For some reason I was reminded of this story when I saw a pattern in A Quilters Mixology by Angela Pingel from Cut to Pieces. I may have been primed as an earlier pattern is called Arabian Nights but when I saw Angela’s ornament design it reminded me of Aladdin’s lamp and then probably, that’s how I got to Ali Baba and the thieves hiding in oil barrels.



Still for whatever reason this pattern stuck in my head and knowing I didn’t want to make a bed quilt I decided to make a smaller project, a sewing machine cover! Now my machine gets used a lot but you still get dust gathering on the top plus you can see in our kitchen window at night time, through the fancy sheer, let in as much light as you can in the daytime blinds, that I thought were a fantastic idea!



So a dust protector and a hide the big machine protector was in order. I decided to be really clever and resize Angela’s 16” blocks to 8”, 10” and 12” to make a cover with a big lantern on one side and 2 smaller ones on the other. Sewing tiny curves is a bit fiddly and making the 8” yellow block gave me pause. So much for clever! I found it easier to hand sew the smallest curves in the end and I surprised myself at how close to 1/4” I got my eyeballing it and basically winging it! Sometime you just have to trust yourself and take a chance. I’ll pay more attention next time I decide to re-size someone’s hard thought out design!

To get this gorgeous continuous curve effect Angela uses a modern update on the traditional drunkards path block. The drunkards path block is essentially a quarter circle on a square background. The wandering path this block makes when combined with others is meant to symbolise the weaving path someone under the influence of alcohol takes on the way home!

Amy Gibson’s free Craftsy 2012 BOM has an excellent tutorial for the traditional block and I’ve seen a cheater method at Missouri Star Quilt Company where you applique a circle to a square and cut it into quarters. Angela uses a modern version of this block with an enlarged circle that goes almost all the way to the edge leaving only 1/4" seam allowance of the background block. When pieced to other blocks this gives a continuous curve which Angela uses to great effect to create Butterflies and lanterns and baubles!



Of course resizing and doing my own thing left me making this the hard way. I cut out my own templates and forgot that Angela has a trick in her book to make this easier. Make the block over sized and trim down. I didn’t do that and made the traditional way with pins and went very slowly.



Still it was worth the effort in the end as I really love the curved effect of this block!



Fabrics were left overs from my Lost in London quilt with a bit of purple added in. And the background came from a piece left over from it the Tape it quilt pattern we played with during the workshop with Brigitte Heitland. So a bit scrap friendly!



I may have made a mistake in the sizing though. The length is not too bad but will shrink a bit when quilted. 



The pink looks likes it in the right place but I should have placed the yellow a smidge lower. Oh well!



Still I now have a finished flimsy. I may just make it a little bit wider! Any suggestions for quilting it? What I have in my head is probably far too ambitious for my hands at this stage in my free motion quilting abilities but its a small project so probably a good one to practice on!


Linking up to