Still on the Drawing Board
I was very proud of myself for having figured out the block construction for that reverse-engineered block. I made all the blocks and the border and sewed it all together into a baby quilt approximately 40” x 40”. I went to town to run errands and pick up a backing for it. When I got home, I walked into the bedroom and stopped to look at the quilt on the design wall, and then it hit me.
I hadn’t actually succeeded in what I set out to do.
I’m going to try to explain the dilemma without giving too much away, which is becoming a problem for me. While I try to assume the best of people—and all of you, dear blog readers, are especially wonderful—the fact that I put my thought processes out in public means that any unscrupulous person could come along, take advantage of all the R&D that I’ve done, and pass off my work as their own. It’s rare, but it does happen. We have friends with a pottery business who had one of their signature lines copied (and copied badly) and sold in a local tourist shop. I’m trying to be prudent without being paranoid.
[I am not interested in having a heated debate about copyright, by the way, in case anyone is inclined to start one in the comments.]
The block I’m working on has two elements, one of which is a quarter circle. Put four of these blocks together and you get a full circle. Put enough blocks together and you get full circles and a secondary pattern formed by the second element in the block. I thought that using my Accuquilt cutter would speed things up, and it did. The problem is in the size and layout of the Drunkard’s Path dies. I’ll show you what I mean.
Drunkard’s Path blocks are based on a square with an arc inside. The arc can be placed anywhere within the square as long as there is sufficient fabric left for seams.
The Accuquilt die units look like this (dashed lines are cutting lines and solid lines are seamlines):
As you can see, the “pie” portion of the block takes up roughly half of the block. When the Drunkard’s Path block is sewn to the second element, there is a significant portion of background fabric showing.
What I need is a Drunkard’s Path block that looks more like this:
In this version, the “pie” takes up most of the block. Less of the background fabric is visible. Ideally, when the units are assembled, the “pie” piece should butt right up against the second element of the block.
What happened with the Accuquilt-cut units was that when the reverse-engineered block was set into the quilt, the secondary pattern did emerge, but it became glaringly obvious that I could have achieved exactly the same look by alternating two different blocks, one containing each element, because the circle and the secondary pattern were the same size. What I need is for the circle to be larger than the secondary pattern, and to do that, I have to change the Drunkard’s Path block. Making the second element smaller isn’t going to matter much if I still have the excess background fabric on the Drunkard’s Path block.
[I explained it to the husband thusly: If I published the pattern the way I did it, someone would have looked at it and said, “Why did you take the scenic route to get to this destination when you could have taken the highway?” I need to have a good reason for taking the scenic route.]
So. I have a couple of choices.
1) I can cut the pieces on my 4-1/2” Drunkard’s Path die but trim the background section down after I sew the two pieces together. That wastes fabric. It also results in a 6” finished block (when sewn to the second element, which I also sized down) and I am not crazy about making 6” finished blocks, even for a baby quilt. However, I made two last evening to test this theory and it does work.
2) I have the 7-1/2” Drunkard’s Path die, but cutting those blocks down after sewing them together wastes even more fabric. I can (barely) stomach trimming 1/2” off a 4-1/2” block, but I cannot stomach trimming off more than an inch on each side from a 7-1/2” block.
3) Ideally, I would like a Drunkard’s Path block that is somewhere in the middle in terms of size, but Accuquilt doesn’t make a die in that size. There is a big jump from the 4-1/2” die to the 7-1/2” die. A 5-1/2” or 6” die would be perfect. I’ve looked at the available templates from quilt retailers and they all seem to be laid out the same as the Accuquilt die, with more background than “pie.” (Missouri Star’s templates look like they might work.) I could draft and make my own templates out of template plastic, but do I then want to cut all the blocks by hand?
4) I can design and pay for a custom die from Accuquilt. That would speed up things considerably on my end, although quilters would still have to make their own templates. (Or buy one, if I can suggest a suitable version.)
I am still thinking on how I would like to go forward. This whole exercise was not a complete waste of time, as I do have a baby quilt I can gift to someone in the future.
This is the part of being a designer that no one likes to talk about, LOL. Trust me, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.
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Tera called the other day and we had a nice chat. She had looked over Noon and Night for me and suggested some edits. She also said that she really enjoyed her class with Sarah Peasley. I asked how many people were in it and she said almost 20. Kudos to Sarah—teaching that many students in person is one thing; teaching that many students on Zoom is quite another.
We are both itching for a road trip and a quilting class. I keep checking the class schedules for all the stores within 250 miles for something suitable. Even a trip to Missoula would be good.
The first draft of Cobbles and Pebbles is about half written. I need to finish that one so I can send both patterns off to the tech editor next week. I’ve got tax stuff ready to drop off at the accountant on Monday (he is thrilled). The backing came for Cobbles and I’ll take that with me to the church this weekend and lay it out and pin baste it. If the weather cooperates, it would be nice to get out and take some photos of Noon and Night.