It's another week on Bonnie Hunter's Magical Mystery Quilt Tour of sightseeing in Vietnam! Part Four can be picked up here. She also makes a good point about downloading the instructions: you aren't required to print out all of the pages of instructions. You can print just the pages you need or copy and paste just the text into a word processing document and print only that. Of course you can also just follow the instructions on your computer, tablet or phone and completely save on the printer ink! Just be sure to save it to your device in case you need to refer back to it after the mystery is done and removed from her blog.
This week, mystery quilters are making what Bonnie calls "Multi-Triangles" in Blue, White and Red. I wondered if there is another name for this basic block so I consulted Barbara Brackman's "BlockBase". She only has it categorized as a "Two Patch Block with Equal Diagonal Division".
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| It's the block circled by the blue square. |
Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue so I'll stick with Bonnie's name for it! These are basically Half Square Triangles where one half is made up of two Quarter Square Triangles pieced together. Bonnie gives instructions for rotary cutting these as well as provides templates for paper-piecing them.
As for me, I am still on the "Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll" quilting expedition. I have finished up the continuous stitching along the string block seam allowances and am now doing the same for the "Boll" blocks. That got held up as I hit a snag with the threads I had planned to use. Because of the high contrast between the more neutral string Quarter Square blocks and the Red, Brown and Pink "Boll" blocks, my plan was to use two different threads on each section. I had picked Aurfil #5011 for the light blocks and #2370 for the dark blocks and thought the two would balance out after everything was stitched. I had done a similar thing when I made a desk mat for a friend a few years ago.
In that instance I found that the two grays used balanced out the stitching on the light and dark areas to create an overall even, balanced look. However, it didn't work this time probably because there was too much contrast in the two threads I used.
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| I'm not sure how well the differences show up here... |
After stitching the first seam (on the right in the picture), I felt there was TOO much contrast between the threads. I tried switching back to the same light thread used for the initial stitching along another seam (on the bottom of the block). That actually looked better than I expected.
When I've used the Dark Tan #2370 in my Civil War repro projects, I have sometimes used #2324 with it as the "light thread" so I tried that one (top seam). Hmmm, I think I like that! It reads a lot like #5011 but doesn't contrast as much on the "Boll" blocks. I think I may even stick with this thread when I'm ready to switch to the free-motion stitching and use it to stitch the centers of both blocks.
Since I'm free today to continue work on the stitching along the block seams, I'll probably start on basting "Old Tobacco Road" over the weekend with the pins I've freed up. I have also been continuing on my Thanksgiving project cross stitching in the evenings. I am thrilled that I am almost halfway done:
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| Last reported on here. |
It has certainly taken longer than I expected but I like that I am able to stitch in the evening while listening to the late night news shows. Takes some of the sting off of what they report on! So I'm hoping that maybe next week I can report on two finishes?!? Stay tuned!
1 comment:
Your quilting expedition is going well!!!
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