Quilt for Westley part 1

My son and dil are expecting their first in October.  He has already been given the name Westley. Upon hearing the name I asked my son: Does he grow up to become the Dread pirate Roberts? (Princess Bride reference).  Yes, the reason my son likes that name is because of all the years of watching and rewatching Princess Bride. Ahhh, it’s so nice when the fond memories of their childhood become important to them as adults.

The theme of the baby room is the sea.  I have started making a very appropriate quilt. A mariners compass of course.I met Judy Mathieson years ago when she still belonged to the San Fernando Valley Quilt guild and I saw some of the quilts in person. So I knew that this book would be a very good primer on the subject.Paper piecing of course. I enlarged the star by 50%. Which meant cutting and taping. I think I need to buy a ream of legal size paper. The compass is made up of 8 segments, each broken down even further to accommodate the smaller triangles. My first few were built one at a time, to make sure I was sewing correctly.

Notice the fabric? Not only is this a sea themed design, the fabrics were chosen with the same theme in mind – including pirates of course!Here is the compass half done. Which brings up a sore subject for me.  Fabric design.  I studied and worked as a textile artist.  One thing we never did was design one way fabric. Here is an example of what we never did.The anchors are only going in one direction. If you look back at my compass, I wanted this effect in the background, which means that I wasted a lot of fabric. From half a yard, this is all I had left as well as a lot of wasted triangles.   I know, today every quilting fabric company is hiring 10 new designers by the hour to come up with new lines.  There is a lot of creativity there  but most of these women have no clue about repeats, or overall design. The companies don’t seem to be interested in this either – since fabric buyers are snatching everything up.  Sure in many cases, when cutting up fabrics for quilts, the patches are small enough that direction doesn’t matter.  I often find that this forces me into buying larger quantities simply so I will have enough fabric for my projects.  If you look closely at the pirates and the blue anchors – the elements are tossed – which means less waste when cutting. Even having the anchors go in two directions would have been less wasteful.

Why the rant? Because I’m sick of being lectured by the greenies about how wasteful my life is and how I am no longer entitled to a plastic bag at the grocery store.  I love the plethora of fabrics available now that weren’t there 5 years ago. I’m sure the companies are thrilled that I have to buy more yardage. Just wondering when someone will remark that the old way of laying out fabric was actually better for all of us.  Rant over.Once I established that my segments work fine I chain pieced the rest before putting each segment together. Much faster.  One issue with this technique, I had to match up the longer seams, so yes there was a lot of ripping out before I got them perfectly matched. A very important process, I want this large circle to lay flat.Here is it!  It worked out perfectly.  The center circle was appliquéd on.  You will be seeing more of this fabric from Alexander Henry.  When Elk and Mandy returned from their wedding they stopped off in Panama for a few days. So this is beyond perfect.I won’t remove the paper until the compass is inserted into the background.  I need every bit of stability I can get.Looks even better from this angle.

I am loving this project. More posts to come as the quilt grows. I have no definite plans yet, the ideas will come as I approach each new stage.

Linked at WIP Wednesday