Finally, this quilt top is done.  I've been quite in suspense about it, waiting to see if it would actually be worth quilting.  

What if it was so ugly I'd have to donate it to the local animal shelter to use for dog bedding? ..... No, it couldn't be that bad.  

Once I added a border, I started liking it much better. So I added two more. What do you think? I think it's a keeper.    

I love the way borders set off a quilt, like putting a picture in a frame. And I really love multiple borders. What I do NOT love is math, so I made myself a handy-dandy spreadsheet to crunch the numbers for me. I can plug in the size and number of my blocks, and widths of up to 10 borders, and instantly see how the quilt grows, how many strips to cut for each border, and how much yardage I'll need. Sure, I can do most of that in EQ, but I don't like EQ yardage estimates for borders. I always cut my borders across the width of the fabric and piece the strips with diagonal seams, so I wanted the yardage calculated specifically for that method. Also, it's really handy to know how many strips to cut before I start cutting.  

Click here for my nifty Quilt Border Calculator.  If you want to use the border calculator, click the link, then click SAVE. Otherwise, you won't be able to save your own calculations. It will only work if you have Excel on your computer. I'm still trying to figure out a way around that, but I'm not terribly hopeful. Maybe I should ask my brother, who is a genuine techie nerd. Every family needs one, ya know?

Please, please, please, let me know if you discover any bugs in it, or if you have suggestions for improvements.

Old Maid's Ramble.

That's the name of the block, not a summary of Jane Eyre's story, though it could be.  After all, unlucky Jane did quite a bit of rambling as a lonely young woman, if not actually an old maid, before she finally won her Rochester in the end.  

I've seen other blocks by this name, as well as this block done differently.  In my version, the small triangles sit on top of the large triangles like a crown, pointing towards the center of the block.  This is the way it's done in the antique quilt in Maggi McCormick Gordon's American Folk Art Quilts.  This is a gorgeous book, not a pattern book, but an album of fabulous antique quilts, with commentary by my favorite quilt historian.  The book includes piecing directions for blocks from several of the quilts, but gets the piecing of Old Maid's Ramble wrong (one strip of bias squares points the wrong way ... and besides, the colors of the sample are even uglier than mine!).  No matter;  I LOVE this book.

The other alternative is pictured in Maggie Malone's must-have book of quilt blocks, 5,500 Quilt Block Designs (block #1182).  In this version, the small triangles point away from the block center, as in a Lost Ships block.  

Now I just have to sew my blocks together, turning every other block so that the big vanilla triangles are next to the big brown floral triangles.  Then the borders.  

To be continued ....

Random placement of fabric:  it's an interesting concept.

Lots of quilt patterns call for arranging fabrics randomly: all sorts of scrap quilts, charm quilts, and many other multi-fabric designs. Have you ever made one of these?  

If so, tell the truth ... how truly "random" were you? I want to know, because I'm trying to assess my level of obsession.

I simply can NOT bring myself to arrange my quilt patches randomly. Casually, yes. Randomly, never. I might start by tossing all my patches up on the design board, willy-nilly. But then I spend HOURS carefully re-arranging them, seeking some elusive perfection in balance of color, value and texture. Should I seek professional help?

This obsessive tendency really gave me fits with all those randomly-colored bias squares. There were 800 of them! OK, really only 720, after pulling out the corner triangles, then only 640 after pulling out the red ones for the center blocks. That's still a LOT of possible juxtapositions to consider.  

Sewn together into left and right-handed pairs, there are 160 pairs of each persuasion (left & right, that is). These now get combined into little 4-pair stacks of lefties and righties. That will be 2 lefties and 2 righties for each of my 20 blocks, for a total of 80 stacks.  

To be continued .....

Every time I make a queen-size bed quilt, at some point in the process I start to think of second grade catechism with Sister Norma.  Definition of a mortal sin:

1)  It has to be BIG

2) You have to KNOW that it's BIG

3)  You do it ANYWAY.

Now it's time to sew all 800 pairs of vanilla + color triangles.  I'm ready to repent.

First, pull out 80 triangle pairs (four for each block), in any random colors.  These get sewn into bigger triangles, like the photo.  Half of them need to be left-handed and half right-handed.

All the rest of the triangles pairs get sewn into bias squares.  Again, half left-handed and half right-handed.  (Just kidding about that, though the left/right thing will get to be very important, and possibly very aggravating, in the next step.)

To be continued ....

rying to work with ugly fabric can be so demoralizing.  I need comfort food.  

How about an ice cream sundae?  

Think of the brown floral as chocolate.  Of course, with that green in there, it would have to be chocolate-covered olives or something ... No, just chase that image right out of your head.  

Anyway, if I think of the brown floral as chocolate, then the light floral might be vanilla with, you know, those rainbow sprinkles on it.  

Is this image working for you?

Since the color in the light print gets kind of lost, I want to use patchwork to extend the theme of lots of colors on a vanilla background.  With a little more rummaging in my stash, I find a latte-colored monochrome floral.  The print has that same I-came-from-a-haunted-Victorian-mansion style as the other 2 fabrics.  Perfect.  

It also has the same drabness that plagues the other two. Maybe mixing in lots of color will liven it up.  One can always hope.

With a sigh worthy of Jane Eyre, I cut 400 3-inch squares (40 for each of the 20 blocks I'm making), and slice the squares diagonally to yield 800 half-square triangles.  Now I need an assortment of reds, blues, greens, and purples to make another 800 triangles to pair with them. 

There I was, confronting a snarling brown-and-green large-scale floral behemoth.   Seriously.  If it was an inch, it was 4 1/2 yards.

I remember thinking it was gorgeous when I bought it, eons ago.  I must have been depressed at the time.  

Really, it's good quality stuff, and rather elegant in a Morticia Addams sort of way.  But since the local funeral parlor wasn't planning to re-upholster, I was going to have to quilt with it.  I needed a plan.

Searching through my stash, I found a promising companion fabric:  a floral with reds, blues, purples and greens on a background the color of coffee with a lot of cream.  Sounds colorful, doesn't it?  Nope.  The miniscule spots of color were overwhelmed by a sea of tan with an overlay of tiny black dots.  I had 3 1/2 yards of it. 

The two fabrics seems to have some kinship.  I checked the selvages.  Sure enough, they were both reproductions from the 1840s.  It must have been a bleak decade.

Ugly or not, the pair had the first essential element of a good quilt:  strong value contrast.  I was starting to think that this might work. 

I cut ten 13 1/2-inch squares from each fabric, then sliced the squares twice diagonally to make quarter-square triangles.  A total of 40 triangles from each fabric.

To be continued.....

Sooner or later it had to happen.   My obsession with fabric brought me face to face with dreaded existential questions, demanding answers: 

   Why did I buy that ugly fabric?

and further:

   Why did I buy so MUCH of that ugly fabric??

and most terrifying to ponder:

   What am I ever going to do with all that ugly fabric???

Being a quilter, I knew there was only one way to slay the demon beast ... cut it into pieces!  Armed with my rotary cutter and shielded by my Omnigrid ruler, I went to do battle on the gridded green field, where all quilters must prove their worth.

To be continued ........