I should have known when I couldn’t find this pattern on Judy Neimeyers site that not many people made it. It is hard! But I kept at it because, there is something so unusual and unique about it.
Top is done! It was a very long road getting here, and an expensive project to boot. That is OK, this is the third quilt I’ve made this year. I have ordered the materials for a serious cross stitch project. So quilting will be on the back burner for a few months.
Here is the pile of the final blocks. Yay! I forgot, now I need to pull out the papers. It was suggested to just pull the centers out, leaving the sides in to stabilize the blocks. Heck no! My least favorite thing is removing the papers.
Ugh! I hate this. I love the kind of blocks one gets with paper piecing, I cannot stand the process of removing the paper.
This is what the wastebasket and floor look like. And it’s not like I’m getting all the paper out, many bits and pieces remain.
I’m going row by row, I would shoot myself if I sat there and removed all the papers first.
And this is why taking pictures along the way is so important. I simply didn’t see the two blocks that were upside down. I was very careful not to make this mistake again. Guess what, on the final row guess what mistake I made again! Grrr
Much better!
Almost there! Mirrors are also wonderful tools. In this case, makes it look like a real long quilt.
It is looking so good! really three dimensional. Trying to figure out how to quilt it.
Oh, another thing, the pattern called for using solid black in the background, I opted for dark brown. Another advantage of using batik is that there were four different patterns for the sawtooth bands. Because batik appears the same on both sides, I was spared a lot of work!! The same was true of the diagonal background strips, I simply cut them and flipped them which ever way they needed to be.
Take a close look, a lot of paper scrapes. This is the last you will see of them, they will simply be quilted into the quilt and no one will know. It turns out that antique English paper pieced quilts often have the complete paper still in there. I am happy to say that I bought a wide backing for this one. Another thing I’m getting tired of doing is piecing backs. It was a way of conserving fabric, but these days, one can find wide backing at a reasonable price. Since this one isn’t that large, I will be using the width of the fabric for the length, it will be fine.
And now, to rest and ponder how I will quilt this. It won’t be intricate, but knowing me, it will be more work than is necessary.
Leah