Quilts and Everything Else

Heart Throb Quilt Top (UFO).

In September 2003, I joined the Sunshine Quilters Guild of San Diego.

On October 14, 2003, Sharyn Craig visited our guild and talked about Setting Solutions - ways to deal with orphan blocks, mismatched blocks and size/color differentials. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get her book that night, thinking money was tight and the guild was purchasing for our library

Our next speaker was Peggy Martin (11/11/2003) who talked about and showed us her quick strip paper piecing method. Fortunately, I did get her book.

At the January 13th meeting, we had a sew-in. We were formed into groups. One person cut, another pressed (or ironed as in the case of my group), another sewed (that was me) and another squared up. Our little group had, if I recall, 15 blocks completed. Not the least number completed and not the most. Another group had 31! (Photos with the ladies and the completed quilt.) It was a really crazy heart pattern and when background fabric ran out, we were given other material. The result was a number of our blocks had a mix of background fabrics and a few wouldn't square right.

We were told we could share the blocks or flip a coin and winner takes all --or whatever we wanted to do within our group. My group elected to share. They were having a hard time deciding who got what. Remember those weird blocks I just mentioned? Well, I volunteered to take "only the ugly" blocks (4 of them) and that made everyone happy.

The next day I was looking at the blocks. In the light of day, I decided, weird was not a sufficient description. I then remembered how Sharyn Craig had used a "twist & turn" method to square up the blocks. I grabbed a neutral color and proceeded to experiment. The first try (since I had no instructions by which to go by), was to sew a strip on all 4 sides, create a square template, tilt it on the blocks and whack off the excess. It worked, but wasn't very consistant in the results, even if all the blocks were now the same size. I then took a bolder color (again remembering Sharyn Craigs discussion about not being afraid of color), and this time, I cut the strips on the diagonal and sewed them on. That worked a little better. The next strip, a bolder yet color, done the same way, went a lot better. By now, I had the blocks twisting 3 times, and these hearts were lying on their sides - no matter what I did, I couldn't imagine making them into a quilt!

I got out my EQ5 and recreated the blocks the best I could. After 2 days of playing with the software I came to the conclusion, the blocks needed to be "righted" (twisted back into an upright position). I did one more strip, but this time twisted in the opposite direction -- and was I ever amazed -- it worked! My blocks now had a proper up-and-down perspective and the last color I had chosen was gorgeous. Now what to do with 5 rather good sized blocks. In the beginning they ranged from 5"x6" to 6-1/2" square. After playing with them, there were, if I recall, 11-1/2".

I set them aside and went to work on another project. That night I was thumbing through some of my books looking for inspiration, when I paid closer attention to the cover of Peggy Martin's book. On it, she had alternated blocks with a modified 9 patch. (I don't know what it's called. You start with a 9-patch and then add sashing and cornerstones 2 times. The result is a block with centered 9-patch and an "X" through out the whole block.)

Back to EQ5. Given I now had 5 blocks (I made one more, the orange one in the upper-right corner), I tried a 9-patch layout with my completed heart blocks and the idea from the cover. It looked pretty good, but it wasn't just right. Then it hit me. I remebered another book I had, something like "uneven patchwork". If I made each of the blocks getting smaller as it went out, then I would get what would look like a "throb", and with my hearts ... yup, you got it ... Heart Throb! Oh, and yes -- I did intentionall cut off the points on my flying geese. I wanted the corners to look like the corner tabs holding a picture in an album.

So, what do you think of the result?

01/23/2004

I did my design in Electric Quilt 5. Pretty good rendtion, right?

Page Last Modified: 01/26/2011