What Makes It Broken Dishes?

I was called for jury duty this week. I am not sure if I will have to go; I need to call the night before to find out if the case has been settled. I also need to find out if it is okay for me to take knitting with me to work on while I (presumably) have to wait. I have been put in the pool before and never called in, so this will be a new experience for me if it turns out I become a juror.

I also need to give you an update on our family situation. It was never my intent to leave you all hanging, but we needed to let things ride for a couple of weeks until we had a handle on the details. My mother-in-law was diagnosed—completely unexpectedly after what we all thought was a routine operation—with cancer. It has taken several weeks to complete testing, meet with the oncologist, and make a plan for moving forward. We gratefully accept all positive thoughts and prayers as she begins her treatment.

The new year has gone sideways for several people we know. The husband reminds me that this is all part of life, but I find it terribly unfair that good people have to suffer while people out there who represent the worst of humanity somehow seem to get away with it.

Speaking of that . . . someone has been parking out in front of our house in the early morning. This started just after Christmas—I noticed one morning when I came downstairs that a car had stopped on the road near the south end of our property and was sitting there with its lights on. As soon as I went into my office and flipped the lights on, it slowly drove north past our house. The same thing has happened several other times since then. I can’t come up with a pattern other than it happens randomly and it’s always between 4:15 and 5:00 a.m. when I come downstairs. We know the person who delivers the paper out here. He drives in the other direction and says he hasn’t seen anything odd. Our house is back far enough from the road that I can’t see the make or model of the vehicle. We have alerted the neighbors about this. Thankfully, several of us are home during the day to keep an eye on what’s going on. The rate of theft in the Flathead Valley has escalated dramatically in the past couple of years, especially in the outlying areas where thieves depend on homes being vacant during the day.

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I have quilt blocks on the brain at the moment. This is not what I want to be working on—I’d like to work on pattern drafting—but when the brain is being a cranky toddler, sometimes it’s best not to argue. My current obsession is with the Broken Dishes quilt block. Please tell me if I am being pedantic about this. I get really annoyed when people call things by names that don’t apply. A Google search for “broken dishes quilt” or “broken dishes quilt block” brings up a whole bunch of images for quilts, not all of whose units (in my humble opinion) fit the definition of “broken dishes” block.

This is a line drawing of a broken dishes block:

It is made up of half-square triangles. If you imagine it made in two starkly contrasting fabrics—one dark and one light—it’s possible to see how the darker fabric rotates its position as you move from left to right and top to bottom around the block.

Depending on how you set those blocks within a quilt, you can get some really interesting effects. The Grandma’s Broken Dishes pattern by Diane Tomlinson is a great example:

I think this would be a terrific quilt for showcasing my vast supply of Kona.

[I am trying very hard to provide proper attribution and links to these graphics I am borrowing, but some of them, like this one, were victims of the Great Craftsy Debacle and not all of the links work.]

Now image the block using three different fabrics—two dark and one light. The dark triangles in the middle of the square are done in one dark fabric and the dark triangles at the upper right and bottom left positions are done in another dark fabric. The owner of this site wants written requests for permission to use her photos and graphics, so I am just going to give you the link and let you go look at her Broken Dishes block as an example.

[My feeling is that if someone wants to use the photos from my blog and provides proper attribution and links to drive traffic back here, they are welcome to do so. That’s how my blog has gotten many new readers over the years. I realize that not everyone shares that philosophy, however.]

The reason that quilter’s block works with two different dark fabrics is because the two dark fabrics are of similar value. It is still possible to pick out the Broken Dishes unit within the overall design.

What annoys me, though, are the designs labelled “Broken Dishes Something Or Another” which are really just a mish-mash of half-square triangles laid out any old way. In other words, all Broken Dishes blocks are made up of half-square triangles but not all half-square triangle blocks are Broken Dishes blocks.

Believe me, I know that quilt block names can be very fluid. The same block may have several different names just because it comes from different parts of the country. Names and conventions evolve over decades of use. This one seems pretty straightforward to me, though, and I’d like to see a bit more discipline in using the correct terminology.

Feel free to weigh in with your opinion.