Texas Quilting

I have my own mini version of “finish it up Friday” going on at the house today.  I’m very close to completing the quilting on the stained glass quilt.  My goal before the end of the weekend is to at least get that done, and if I were to get the binding on it, that would be a big bonus.

As you can see in the picture, I’m responsible for slowing down my own progress.  I’m really not crazy about these machinger glovers or whatever they’re called.  Overall, they do help with the grip and they keep my hands from getting tired as quickly, but I do lose the direct interaction with the fabric.  I got a little too close for comfort, and sewed the tip of a finger of the glove in there.

The good news is, no fingers of mine were harmed in that process!  Never fear; even if there had been an injury, that’s not my style to show stuff like that.  I’m on the outer border; I sewed piano keys on the teal border and used rulers which took pretty much forEVER .  I flipped through a book I have on machine quilting designs and this one with the multiple arrows caught my eye.  I decided to skip the rulers and just do my best.  This will be on the side of the bed so not as noticeable when I don’t have even stitches or straight lines.  I call this another example of “don’t quit your day job!”

After looking at the layout for the start of my mariner’s compass earlier this week that I plan to make into an ID badge for our quilt guild, I decided the fabrics I chose were too busy.

Back to the drawing board.  I kept the white and ditched the rest.  I cut out another template for the block and this time paper pieced a full quarter of the block from start to finish.

This block is designed to be 12″ finished, but since I only want it to be 6″ finished, I reduced the printed copy to 50%.  This is probably obvious, but it’s important to remember that the seam allowance will also shrink by 50% – i.e., there will be just 1/8″ seam allowance if you actually cut on the dotted lines.

I laid a regular ruler on top of the solid lines around each edge of pieces A, B, C, and D and measured out 1/4″ and then cut.  Again, I glue basted the seams together to make it easy to match up the points.

And through the magic of mirrors…voila!  You can get an idea of what the finished block will look like.  I’ll actually switch the 2 red fabrics so that they alternate; that’s a limitation of the mirrors.  Also, the blue point in the front is what it will actually look like, where it uses different fabrics.  There are 3 variations of the mariner’s compass in the book “The Quilter’s Paper Piecing Workbook” by Elizabeth Dackson.  I thought I had printed the starfall compass block but this one is actually striped compass block.  I like it too!