Completed Bridge Abutments and Qubes

Just for the sake of completeness, here are the pictures of the bridge abutments after the forms were stripped. In this one, the lumber used to form the recess has not yet been removed:

This is after the lumber was removed:

And this is a shot of the completed abutments on either side of the creek.

If anyone has any further questions, let me know and I’ll pass them along to the contractor. He does have a website. I am kicking around the idea of putting up a blog page over there for these sorts of things, not that I need another blog to manage. If I do that, the posts would be irregular and less frequent, but I’d set it up so anyone interested could subscribe to updates via e-mail.

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I’ve got 18 of the 42 Noon and Night stars quilted; if I do 12 a day, that’s two more days of work before I can trim and bind it. I may be able to stick to my original deadline. Or I may take a break for a day or two and work on some other projects. I’ll re-evaluate after breakfast.

The husband and I have a debriefing session every night when he gets home. Sometimes it’s over drinks, sometimes it’s while I am making dinner. In nice weather, it’s out on the veranda. This is the sketch I drew for him last night over drinks.

I was trying to explain the Qube system to him. The sketch is more to help me present the information than to help him understand it, as he has no trouble picturing what I am describing in his head.

The Qube system works with the Accuquilt cutters. Each Qube is a collection of eight basic die shapes that can be used together to make 72 different quilt blocks. Currently, there are five Qube collections that create quilt blocks in 6”, 8”, 9”, 10”, and 12” finished sizes. Each Qube collection also has two add-on collections—Corners and Angles—with additional dies for making even more quilt blocks.

Some brilliant person figured out that each Qube collection—which makes quilt blocks based on a four-patch, or four-square grid—could also be used to make larger squares if the grid were expanded to a nine-patch. Thus, an 9” Qube can be used to make 13-1/2” quilt blocks (not 13”, as I had in my head for some reason), a 10” Qube can be used to make 15” quilt blocks, and a 12” Qube can be used to make 18” quilt blocks. That’s expandable even further, in theory, but eventually the blocks get too big.

I redeemed some credit card reward points to buy myself a 9” Qube system as I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about using it. Why did I pick 9”? That was entirely a random decision. That size sounded good at the time.

If I am going to design something for publication, be it knitted or quilted, I will be thinking about the pattern writing process right from the very beginning, because the ease with which I can present information about how to make the thing is going to inform some of my design decisions. I may be fascinated by some esoteric technique and want to incorporate it into the design. However, if that technique requires two additional pattern pages and a lot of illustrations and explanations, I might discard it in favor of something less complicated.

When I began working on this new quilt design, I thought it would be great if I could write the pattern in such a way that it could be constructed conventionally with rotary cutting or with the use of the Qube. I soon found myself in the weeds. To explain why, I’ll use the Broken Wheel quilt block as an example. This was one of the two blocks I was playing with on Sunday:

This is a nine-patch grid. I can make each of the nine units using dies from the 9” Qube, but that will result in a finished quilt block measuring 13-1/2”.

For ease of cutting—because quilters do not like having to cut odd measurements such as 3-5/16”—directions for making the Broken Wheel block are generally given in 6”, 9”, and 12” finished sizes. That wouldn’t work in a quilt design using a 9” Qube because I’d have to write two simultaneous patterns, one for a 12” block and one for a 13-1/2” block.

[If you read that and said to yourself, “But it WILL work if you used a 6” or 8” Qube, because you would end up with a 9” or a 12” quilt block,” you may go to the head of the class. Good work.]

A 13-1/2” block is an oddity in the quilting world. If I were writing a pattern specifically to be used with the Qube, with no rotary cutting instructions included, it wouldn’t matter one bit to have an odd-sized block. I don’t think I would try to combine the two methods in one pattern. At most, I might include a notation along the lines of, “This block can also be constructed using (X size) Qube system, if you would prefer to construct it that way. Use the following dies: (die numbers).

There is one other issue that crops up when using Qubes, but I’ll address that in a different blog post.