I’m in trouble. Major trouble. I was sure that after I finished Springtime in Paris I’d start working on setting the butterfly kaleidoscope stars together. Had the setting figured out. Everything was planned. I’m rather enjoying having projects planned out a … Continue reading
Where have I been? Stitching. Stitching lots and lots and lots of these little half blocks, to be exact. With the chain piecing by hand method, these are going together much faster than I had anticipated. So much faster that … Continue reading
You’ve seen these before. But it has been a very long time. January of 2013, to be exact, was the last time I posted about these. And that was the last time any work got done on them. On the … Continue reading
By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, this box was empty and ready for a new project in a box. That box was empty because the final 150+ 2″ Drunkard’s Path units were all stitched. But then this box … Continue reading
The 2″ Drunkard’s Path units are another one of the candidates for the baseball playoffs quilt. There are 57 more of them done and shown in this photo. There are only 256 left to make. They’re all in this box, … Continue reading
The gift, one of the Rowenta travel irons. I am thrilled to pieces (pun intended) as it is so light and makes pressing blocks so easy on my hands. It gets super hot very quickly and has a little travel case.
The printing of everything for the Drunkard’s Path quilt using 2″ blocks is complete … I think. I may be short a few of the ’30s pieces, but can print more once I have a better idea where I’m at with that. The cutting has begun. That will take me some time as I’m not comfortable using a rotary cutter for this. But if I cut a sheet of the ’30s prints and one of the muslin each evening, I’ll have this done fairly quickly.
The little book box is slowly getting filled up with the pieces. I counted the previously finished blocks and I had, before I realized I could use Inklingo to finish this quilt, made 307 blocks. So only 525 to go.
Well, oops — make that 501 blocks to go. I couldn’t resist making a few on the weekend, some of which are shown here. Twenty-four counts as a few, right? When they’re this small and take only a few stitches to complete?
And just because they’re so cute and press so beautifully, a picture of the back of one of them.
The reason for the gift? It was my birthday yesterday. Mr. Q.O. knew I wanted that Rowenta travel iron. So he picked it up at the Creativ Festival on Friday. His favourite line is that only someone who’s married to a quilter can get away with buying an iron as a gift.
This was the birthday cake. They have these little cakes that come in small mason jars in the grocery store store downstairs. Perfect size for two people.
Baxter loves to lie on Mr. Q.O.’s cryptic crosswords. Mr. Q.O. captioned this one, “Hmm …” I think he was just showing off his lynx tips.
I’ve talked about this book before, Ontario’s Heritage Quilts, and how much I love looking through it. When I first got a copy of the book years ago, I immediately fell in love with a Drunkard’s Path quilt.
But not just any Drunkard’s Path quilt. Oh, no. It had to be one made with 2″ blocks and that would take 832 of those tiny blocks to make.
I made my freezer paper templates and traced them on to ’30s fabrics and muslin and pieced those little blocks for a couple of months. But slowly the tracing of the templates became less and less appealing and harder on my hands. And so into this box the completed little blocks went. And, until last night, the box wasn’t opened again for a number of years.
Last night the light bulb moment occurred and I realized I could use the Inklingo 2″ Drunkard’s Path collection to finish the quilt. I immediately went on a hunt for the box, found it, opened it and was thrilled to realize I already have around 300 of the blocks done.
I grabbed a piece of muslin and a scrap of a ’30s print and had enough printed to make 8 blocks in the time it would have taken me to trace the two shapes for one block. Now I know I can finish the quilt that I have had my heart set on ever since I first saw the quilt in the book. I am over the moon excited about this!
Eight blocks were made last night. Mr. Q.O. timed it and it takes me about 5 to 6 minutes to piece each block. Over the next few weeks I’ll pull out the ’30s fabrics I have and print on them and on the muslin. And eventually I’ll have that quilt made.
For fun I put two of the blocks I pieced last night with two of the blocks from the box for this photograph. They’re going to go together perfectly. The only way to tell the Inklingo printed blocks from the others is that they have the rounded corners and, of course, don’t have the pencil marks on the back from my tracing of the templates. Instead I have the perfect lines printed by Inklingo. So now new life has been given to a UFO that I think would likely have ended up as a doll’s quilt as I couldn’t face tracing those templates over and over again.
While I was flying from the iron to the printer to print the shapes, I glanced over at the couch and noticed Baxter sound asleep like this. I think this may be one of Baxter’s first almost headless cat poses. Mr. Q.O. captioned it, “The Amazing Clingo!” How he stayed up like that is beyond me. Guess the quilt has magical holding powers on kitties.
Quilt Obsession 