The Unknown Quilt Block

Does anyone else remember The Unknown Comic?

I finished the first draft of the pattern for Cobbles and Pebbles yesterday morning and sent it off for editing. I also got Big Top laid out in EQ8. I am not relying on EQ8 to do math for me; all of that gets set up in an Excel spreadsheet. I think it’s actually good for me to be using a couple of different programs—between Illustrator, EQ8, and Excel, I see the pattern from several different angles.

The Cobbles quilt went with me to church Sunday so I could get a picture. Our balcony works really well for quilt pictures and Ken and Steve—the two brothers who sing in our quartet—were willing to hold it up for me.

In the end, I didn’t add a border. I bound the quilt with a dark brown print to provide a frame for it.

I love the fact that it is much easier to customize a quilt than it is to customize a knitting design. Someone might really like a sweater design but prefers a crew neck to the V-neck in the pattern. Changing the neckline of a knitted design takes some knowledge and effort. It doesn’t require a lot of extra work to add a border to a quilt, or leave one off. Or add another row of blocks.

I’ve finished most of the blocks for the Beginner’s Choice/Christmas Fabric wallhanging. That one is going to need a name. Also, I am a bit baffled as to why I cannot find this block—either the 6” unit or the 12” block—in any existing patterns. It seems so simple to me that surely, someone besides Laura Wheeler has based a design on it. If you’ve seen it somewhere, would you please drop me a link in the comments?

Here are my 6” units waiting to be sewn together:

I use some oversized cookie sheets that my friend Anna gifted me. They don’t fit in my oven, but they work really well for laying out quilt blocks.

[I’ve noticed that I tend to go back and forth between brights and neutrals in my projects.]

I need to add the borders to both Big Top and this Christmas fabric wallhanging and get them quilted. That makes four designs; the husband said I should revise my goal for the year upward, but I reminded him that my goal is four finished and published designs. I won’t have met my goal until all of these patterns are for sale in the shop. I am hoping I can add Cobbles before too long.

Our neighbor Mike texted me yesterday about starting seeds, which reminded me that I’ve only got about another month before growing season starts. Our neighbors are all welcome to start seedlings for their gardens in our greenhouse. We have tons of pots and flats and I’m out there every day making sure things get watered. He wanted to check on the timing, but it’s a bit early yet.

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The husband and I watched one of Jack Spirko’s YouTube videos last night. He and his family are in Texas and he reviewed their experiences with the recent cold snap. He noted that it’s important to write things down, like all the steps for starting the generator, so that you’re not trying to remember them in the cold and dark. I mentioned to the husband that I had a cheat sheet for starting the generator and that I had actually used it one time at 2 a.m. because he was gone on a fire call and the power had gone out. I got the sheet for him—I keep it on the filing cabinet in my office with a magnet—and he looked it over and pronounced it “very thorough.” (It includes an admonition not to stand between the weld leads, LOL.) Our fire chief often says, “You perform as you practice.” It’s a good idea to practice some of these things so they become second-nature in an emergency when tunnel vision sets in.

I think it’s also important to recognize normalcy bias in ourselves and others. That’s the tendency of human beings to underestimate potential threats and assume that if something bad hasn’t happened yet, it won’t ever happen. I keep hearing over and over, “Texas doesn’t get this kind of weather so no one was prepared for it.” Well, now we know that Texas DOES get this kind of weather. And what if what takes out the power grid next time isn’t weather? What if it’s a computer hacker?

Perhaps it’s a side effect of having had cancer (leukemia) at the age of 28 and a bad bout with the flu a few years ago, but I’m willing to consider that anything is a possibility. And as the husband notes, it’s usually the things you never see coming that take you out.