Quilt Group Wednesday and Bittersweet Briar went with me. My goal today was to figure out the placement of the main vines, since all the buds, flowers, and leaves work off of them. There’s a set in each of the four background blocks that make up the quilt center, so I wanted to try to get them as uniform and symmetrical as possible. I was thinking about how I would go about placing them last night while I was stroking out watching the Trailblazers play the worst team in the NBA—almost losing, then tying it up, and finally going through overtime to get a tough, ugly win. I had more gray hair this morning. Anyway, in the middle of that trauma, you know how you see something in your mind and it’s the perfect solution—yes, it was a brilliant thought….and I’d seen them hanging on the wall at Fabric Depot for years. Always wanted to buy one, but never could justify using it, so kept waiting. Well, this vine project would be the perfect use for this little tool. It’s a flexible ruler—about 18 inches long, maybe a half inch wide, and you bend it into any shape you want and lay it out as a guide or template, to repeat the same bend or curve multiple times. Brilliant. So I flew onto the floor at FabDepot first thing this morning, and do you think I could find it….NO…better yet, they stopped carrying them due to lack of interest. Damn….. So I started my favorite day of the week with a tiny snarl on my face. Played around with one set of vines until I liked the soft curve and laid out other applique pieces to try to find the proper distance on the first block to kind of match the pattern photo. Once I had that, I did some minimal basting and pinning and our quilt teacher gave me some tissue paper. I traced the vine curves onto it, cut it out, and now I have my flexible ruler pattern in paper to try to lay out the other three blocks so they’re somewhat similar. By the end of class, I hand stitched down the vines in block one, and I’m happy with the natural curves and placement. So the next time I pull this project out, I’ll get working on the other three sets of vines and then I can start layering and pinning the remaining appliques…feeling good that I’m finally moving forward on this project—still one of my favorite traditional patterns of all time…
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 22:03:40 +0000
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