The Fudgy Quilt

When you use pins and steam to get quilt pieces or blocks to fit more precisely, you "fudge" them. This little quilt is very fudgy. The checkers are actually printed on the fabric, and are about 1" square. It took careful cutting of the strips and blocks, and then piecing along the printed lines to give the appearance of being more or less square.

This little quilt is only 42" square.

I'm trying to decide if my six inch red and white 9-patch swap blocks want to be a larger version of this quilt. That would require making alternate 9-patches for the center of each "X" block, with 5 white and 4 red squares each. Many of the settings I like for 9-patch blocks require making setting or alternate blocks.

9-patches and hourglass blocks or 9-patches and snowball blocks give the appearance of stars. 9-patches and churndash blocks are also fun. My blue 9-patch blocks will be set on point and offset every other row to give a 3-d effect. I've made some partial blocks for the sides so none of the swap blocks have to be cut in half.

New and Old

I've been doing quilt bindings the same way for a long time, but while doing 28 corners in one day (7 placemats), my corner technique has changed. I used to stop 1/4" (or the seam width) from a corner when turning, but the corner of the backing kept flipping when starting the next seam, making a lump. Sometime ago there had been a quilting demonstration where you would sew off to the corner, making a mitered seam, so I gave that a try, and it really helped. I thought it was Eleanor Burns, but the video showing her technique is slightly different:
http://quiltinaday.com/television/video-binding.asp

You can teach an old quilter new tricks!

With some unexpected free time, I plowed through a lot of projects in the past two weeks, finishing 4 quilts, lots of placemats, some sweater knitting progress, and even some spinning. The current spinning fiber is from a charity auction, it is not as clean as previous fibers I’ve spun (have to stop every foot or so and pick out pieces of grass, and frequently sweep the fiber crumbs off foot pedals). It is soft, a cream with some darker fibers for a heathered look.

I did a small machine digitized embroidery project – changing DS’s beloved hat from a rival school’s logo to his current college, with the help of a small scrap of fake ultrasuede to make a patch. And learned a new crochet technique--Tunisian crochet from a book, 3rd dishrag finished already. The fabric is nice and dense, and so far has been holding up well. The first was Lion Cotton, the others CotLin.

Found two local podcasts – The Manic Purl (Vancouver BC) and Doubleknit. They both do some traveling, but mostly are talking about things closer to home than SoCal or the Eastcoast.

Knot a Problem group on Ravelry – totally cracks me up! There is competition to untangle other knitter’s yarn! Raverly rocks!