An Experiment

Mostly Failed, But For What It’s Worth

Well, for one, I was inspired.  The movie Lincoln is just out:  I am so looking forward to it.  And then the recent election has absorbed me – and casting my vote always moves me, makes me feel absolutely viscerally connected to who we are.  I know that a lot of people go red, white, and blue when they want to do a patriotic quilt.  I go Civil War.

I’m not really that big a fan of red, white, and blue as a color scheme, for one.  Particularly given my orange walls . . .   More importantly, the Civil War is so central to our nation’s history.  I love the Ken Burns series.  I think on Lincoln – “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” and “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”  The Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural. 

All of which led me to pull up an EQ design I had created a few years ago and not gotten to.

I thought how I could use my 1 1/2" finished half square triangle die from AccuQuilt.

And dip into my bin of Civil War reproduction scraps.

I didn’t bother with cutting to size.  I just laid the scraps on the die.

And before long, I had a bunch of nicely trimmed little triangles, light and dark.

The experiment was to see how using triangles and this design on the fusible quilter’s grid interfacing would work.  So, I cut out a 16 inch square and started to lay down triangles.

Until I had all the light triangles down.  Then I put little glue dots in the seam allowance and laid the dark triangles face down on top of the light.

I sewed the seams and ironed all the triangles open.

And then I used the usual technique for sewing the grid.  (I’m not going to show all that again.  If you want to see how it works with another project, you can visit this tutorial).  Here’s the top all sewn together.

At which point, I was less than impressed.  Love the fabrics.  Love the design (which has been around a long, long time).  Was not impressed with how it didn’t come out quite square and how many of my triangles got mooshed -- which was what drove the experiment to begin with – I was curious if I could keep my points.  Answer: only sometimes.  These are good.

These are not.

So, sometime I will try this again, only I will use my usual Miniatures in Minutes method where I use a foundation on vellum paper.  It will no doubt take a little longer but I’ll get much better accuracy.  That will make me happy.

Still, I didn’t quite want to toss this aside.  I decided I could use a couple new mug rugs before we have Thanksgiving dinner here in a week and a half.  I finished this up, so this could be one of them.

Here’s the back – gotta love that bird.

And here it is on the table by the rocker where I spend my evenings.  Good enough, says I.

Tomorrow I’ll announce who won the EQ7 Karen Stone More Quilts software.  And if I can get reasonably good light, I’ll show off my Dresden Plate blocks.