tricky cards

Taking the day off from quilting--again.

I have 5 of the 9 done as of Thursday evening, finishing up quilting on the strippie top shown HERE. Take a look at the top and let me know if you think it would be better for a girl than boy. Those hearts and all that pink/purple have me debating about that.

Marilyn and I went up to the Piecemaker quilt group on Thursday evening as they were helping our friend and fellow Belle Betsy celebrate a milestone birthday. Marilyn makes and decorates cakes so she had done the honors last week. Then the threat of tornadoes and thunderstorms cancelled the party till this week and the cake went to the freezer. I didn't take anything to work on as I had been quilting all afternoon and had had enough for the day. Marilyn had a pile of donated Card Trick blocks to give me---I'll get back to that in a minute.

Yesterday, no quilting either. I was late getting up and then we walked in the a.m. My morning preparations take longer now that I am back to short hair and having to use a blow dryer along with the straightener for one section and the curling iron for another. Never happy with what we have growing on our heads, are we? Sheesh, makes me want my pony tail back, LOL . Next thing I knew it was lunch time and I had stuff scheduled in the afternoon.

I had to meet Judy at 1 so we could borrow her husband's truck and go pick up four-60 yard rolls of poly batting from a longarmer friend who sells it to us at cost for our donation quilts. It takes us a year and a month or two to quilt or way through this amount of batting as a rule. I was a few minutes late as I dropped a couple quilts off at Jane's house for binding detail. Jane invited me in as her mom (our Sarah) is continuing her recuperation at Jane's and doing so much better this week. Off we went a little after 1--the shop is a little over an hour away. Judy had a top to drop off and I wished I had brought a pattern that is intriguing me as she has a bit of fabric for sale at the shop now. I didn't get back from that trek till almost 4. Why bother when supper fixing was coming in about 45 minutes?

I had been looking for some patterns that are based on nine patches or that incorporate nine patches so I was gathering those as I am considering using them for a BOM for the Belles. One that I think will be fun to try is one that Finn showed in her 2-26-07 post. (Her posts do not have backlinks so I can't take you straight to the post so click on her name and scroll down a bit) I've also have a magazine clipping with the nine patch set on point and made into a basket that is a little unusual. Red Cross , Chunky Churn Dash AKA Dots and Dashes and those woven nine patch hearts that are in my strippie quilt are all possible choices for us to try. (Anyone of a link for that one? It used to be on the EK Tupper Kathkwilts site but I sure don't see it now though it is in my saved files.) Another one that I know Pam just whipped up called Building Blocks is good choice too. Hope she will post the finished top on her blog when she gets a chance. I was going through my notebooks and so forth late Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Got the materials all in one spot now with room for add-on's.

Okay back to the Card Tricks. The picture above is one that I made several years ago using that hard to work with Cobblestone red "kit" fabrics. Any of us involved with WTIL in past years knows this ubiquitous stuff. Heck, I just used a bunch of it for binding and backing on a quilt this past week. It keeps on giving or reproducing, I swear! What you might not see from looking at the quilt is that it is NOT done with traditional Card Trick block which is really just an Ohio Star variation--a couple more lines and a different coloration of the segments. Credited to Beth & Jeffery Gutcheon 1976. That surprises me as I had always thought it was a much older pattern.

Tilt your head to the left and take a look at the block--both of them. Can you see like Marti Michell did that it could be pieced as rectangles and squares and you can put the block at right on point to achieve the same thing? This is from her book Quilts for People who Still Don't Have Time to Quilt. 28 pieces versus 12? No triangles to match up and easier to strip piece--yep, you can see why I chose the technique above.
















As I said, Marilyn handed me a pile of donated Card Trick blocks. These poor things have a problem which appeared to have started with the half square triangle technique the maker had used. The sections do NOT measure the 4 1/2 inches that they should. Then it may or may not have thrown off her piecing in the HST-QST units depending on whether she used templates or the overlay method for the block center. DJ took a look at them and asked if I couldn't (or shouldn't) just pitch them. Well, I could but I know they can be selvaged. The fabrics are pretty though just in two colors rather than 4 as shown in the EQ print out. Squaring to a 12 inch finished block is not going to do it though. The seams she took to try to match the triangle points are deep and the blocks measure more like 11 1/2 in some cases. If I have to take them apart to fix that, then I might as well go all the way with it. So far I have disassembled three of them and just re-cut them to finish at a 9 inch block. I DO love a challenge. I'm almost afraid to see how many more I will have to do as well as the finished units that in the bag.

So anyway, I am piddle dinkin' with the un-sewing, recutting and and preparing this post. Next thing I will know it will be time to worry about what to fix for supper--again. DJ is going to have round eyes like a basketball soon from watching both the SEC and Big 10 tournaments. Next weekend it will be the NCAA revving up. This weekend is just the lead up to the pairings announcements. I am already sick of the talking heads blathering on and on. (For Pete's sake, call the player by his last name if you cannot pronounce his first name correctly!) Another 3 weekends to go?

Hope to be able to at least read what you all are up to---