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| FW 1930s Block No. 88, "Rosemary's Baby" |
I spent a whole hour in my studio a few days ago, just cleaning up the mess from Mission Impossible and last-minute travel wardrobe mending. I was surprised by how far out of control my workspace had gotten in such a short time from being "too busy and too rushed" to clean up after myself as I went along, but it had gotten to the point where I couldn't even work in there anymore. All better now -- and so, as a reward to myself, I pulled out the project box with my 6" sampler blocks and decided to make a couple more random, self-indulgent blocks before getting into one of those important quilts that I keep telling everyone I'm prioritizing... Yes, I know this is why I rarely COMPLETE anything.
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| The Evil That Is Rosemary's Baby, Back View |
Also, can someone please remind me next time that a 6" block containing 53 patches is probably NOT going to be a quick and easy diversion?! There were some hairy moments, some seam ripping, and a little bit of swearing involved -- and although my block miraculously finished at a pretty precise and square 6 1/2", I am displeased by a couple of seams that did not line up precisely when I sewed the final seams. This is why MY block is named "Rosemary's Baby," after the 1968 horror movie.
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| Prep Work for FW 1930s Block 88 "Rosemary," Foundation Paper Piecing |
So this was my beginning prep work for Block #88 "Rosemary" from the book The Farmer's Wife 1930s Sampler Quilt by Laurie Aaron Hird.
The author pieced her Rosemary block using 4 different fabrics, so step one was to rummage through my stash and select 4 fabrics that played nicely together. I went with a smallish scale focus print, coordinating olive green and navy blue in dark values, and a light value chartreuse green for the accent fabric. Next, I colored in the block diagram and scribbled the colors onto my foundation paper piecing templates as well, because when there are this many pieces in a block it is all too easy to get confused about which fabric goes where at the sewing machine.
Then I precut all of my fabric patches, with the correct shape (square, rectangle or HST or QST) as well as the correct grain line (unless I'm fussy cutting, in which case I'm just positioning the print the way I want it to go).
The paper piecing went fine and, thanks to coloring the foundation papers ahead of time, there was no seam ripping due to sewing the wrong fabric in the wrong spot. The difficulties reared their ugly heads and showed their claws once I got to the part where the various foundation pieced sections needed to be sewn together with traditional piecing.
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| One of the Tricky Seams |
Yes, I was pinning, but still struggled with this one stupid place where I needed a perpendicular seam to align with a seam at a 45 degree angle. I finally left it be, against the violent objections of every fiber of my being, because there are only so many times you can rip a block apart and sew it back together before it's irreparably frayed and stretched out of shape. Also, with my particular fabrics, I don't think that the extra time and effort that it would take to get it REALLY perfect would really give me a huge payoff -- your eye just doesn't go there when you look at the block, in my opinion.
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| The Disappointing Mismatched Seams |
Sometimes I get comments from readers who think I'm being hard on myself when I write about these kinds of issues, but it's not about being a hard judge on myself as much as taking a scientific approach -- I want to figure out WHY if something didn't turn out like I expected it to. That's part of the fun for me, in the strange way that the New York Times crossword puzzles are fun for other people! In this case, I think I was overly worried because the pieces seemed so small as I was working on the block, and I was afraid that surely I was shrinking them with steam or from bulk building up in all of those seam allowances. I suspect that I stretched those larger print rectangles (on the diagonal) when I was pressing and starching them. That would explain why the two seams shifted away from one another. And I do have a smidge of excess fabric on the yellowish corner squares to trim away, which also supports my stretched rectangle theory.
So, what's m takeaway? It would have been handy to have an actual size block diagram to use as a reference while piecing a block this complex, so that as I finished and pressed each subunit I could compare it to the diagram and ensure that each unit was finishing the correct size and shape before joining it to the next piece. If I remember, I'll try that next time I tackle one of these little monsters. But I won't be attempting to fix or redo this particular block -- I don't love it that much, and I don't think anyone looking at the finished block would realize that those two seams were necessarily intended to match -- not without my handy little close-up picture with the arrows showing you where the oopses are, anyway!
The blocks in this Farmer's Wife book get more complex the farther you go through the book. I'm starting to think that some of the ones like this one that have a ton of pieces are not really worth what a pain in the keyster they are -- I'm not really feeling the payoff, you know what I mean? Maybe I could have done better with the fabric mix or something. Perhaps, if I decide to do any of these other really elaborate blocks from her book, I'll resize those blocks to 9" or 12" to make them easier to work with, open up my options with larger scale prints and fussy cutting, and get that mix of block sizes that will let me use the 12" applique block...
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| In This Case, Done IS Better Than Perfect! |
And so, moving on... Who knows if this motley assortment of blocks will ever amount to anything, anyway! Except that I just now came up with a good name for these blocks, if they ever do become a quilt. Behold, my Motley Fools Sampler!
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| My Motley Fools Sampler Blocks |
Although today's Rosemary block and several of the others came from the Farmer's Wife 1930s book, I'm not necessarily committed to making ALL of the blocks in that book. I've just been making random 6" blocks off and on from fabrics that appeal to me and I'll figure out what to do with them later. I've made some of the blocks from The Farmer's Wife 1930s Sampler Quilt book, some of the blocks from the original Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt book, a couple random 6" blocks from the EQ8 Block Library, and some interesting/challenging vintage blocks that I resized to 6" so I could mix them in with the others. Then I made that 12" appliqué block in a workshop back in January and decided I might want to mix in some larger blocks with the small ones... I like the idea of mixing up different block sizes, I enjoyed doing that zany colored appliqué block and I would like to mix in some more like that. Maybe some sashing and maybe some borders; I'll figure that out later. For now, I'm just having fun treating each 6" block like its own special creation and then tossing it up on the wall to see what it looks like with the others once it's finished!
I have another sampler block picked out from the Farmer's Wife 1930s book on my agenda but it has far fewer pieces and should go together in a snap for me tomorrow.
SO... My To-Do for Tuesday is to finish that other 6" sampler block, pack this project away again, and then get busy with at least ONE of the following WIPs:
- The obscenely overdue Modern Baby Clam Shell quilt, which needs all of the turquoise patches out and then to be pieced
- Spend some time with the longarm machine, trouble-shooting and finishing up some of the class samples from the Paducah workshops I took back in April
- Prep some more applique for hand stitching at my bee meeting next Monday
Meanwhile, I'm linking up with:
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To all of my American readers, enjoy a happy and safe Independence Day holiday!
