Week 48 West Virginia

Now, you must agree that this block does not look all that difficult. But once I read what was on the flickr site on Saturday I thought "uh oh". In the days following there has been mention of having to starch/press/pull the block into submission. On Monday I cut out two diamonds and went to pin the first seam and discovered my diamond was too small so I abandoned the effort.

This morning, I drafted the block myself (the old fashioned way with paper, pencil and ruler as I do not have EQ/blockbase) and made templates for the diamonds. This was necessary as I wanted to fussy cut and use that wavy stripe fabric. On Saturday I had found the central motif in a fabric in the project pile and I thought it would be a good choice as West Virginia changed sides so often during the war. And finally, the block is done.

A week or two ago I posted a couple of sample setting blocks. Here is an update to that. I know the photo itself is not a good one but it does show the idea of what the setting blocks might look like if I go with this idea. You can see three rough sample blocks: one (too small but for the purpose it'll do) with the inch wide tan colored X, one with a half inch wide blue X and then one with a three quarter inch wide blue X altho I have folded over a small piece of red and stuck it in there too. This was because I was reading an article about color in one of the latest quilt magazines and it suggested that if the majority of your quilt is in "cool" colors then the addition of a small amount of a "warm" color will make it sparkle and visa versa. So if I leave all this up on my design wall and watch it for a few days maybe I'll come up with the answer as to what I might choose to do.

I also wanted to show you a gadget that I like to use. Compared to certain quiltie friends I am not a big gadget person but I do find myself using this tool, the Perfect Piecer, whenever I have a block with diamonds in it and for certain other blocks as well. It is designed by Jinny Beyer who is famous for her hand piecing; all the pin holes you see allow you to make a mark on a shape to aid in correctly hand piecing it to the adjoining shape. Well, I don't hand piece, but I do find that having that mark on the fabric helps me to line up odd shapes and pin them correctly before carefully sewing them on my sewing machine. It certainly helped me with this block and all those Y seams. Come to think of it I did not have to redo any of those seams - they all came out fine the first time.

And working out well the first time is always something to celebrate!