Monday, September 21, 2020

Pickle Dish and Mariners Compass - Part Two


This is a continuation of a post about the making of the pickle dish and mariner's compass quilt.

I always jump to lime green as my first idea for just about any quilt.  So, I looked at lots of Pinterest pictures to get some ideas of what to put with the green.  Many of them were full of all colors, but a few had some toned down grays, blacks, white, and a smattering of pink and turquoise.  Usually, I would put lime green with red-purple and sometimes with red-orange; or with blues and yellows.  This time I decided that it might be fun to experiment with colors that may not be the typical selections from the color wheel and color theory.  

But the first thing that I needed to do was the sketch up the quilt, copy it several times, and play around with colored pencils.  Here is what I came up with:


I liked the one with gray and white, a little bit of black, and lots of green (in the upper left corner).  Although the colors are pale on the drawing, they will be just as vibrant as the one in the lower right hand corner, I promise!   I had all the fabrics I needed from my stash:



I did have to draft up the pattern, after I discovered the original was an 18" circle.  Yikes!  I didn't mind, too much, making another queen sized quilt, but I didn't want to make a monster.  So, I redrafted it for  16" circles, and moved the points in 1/8" from the edge so that they would be floating.  I really like to hand draft and enjoy getting out my old engineering tools and using my drafting table for it's original purpose (and not just as my cutting table).  Here's another little secret - I love math!  Working out this pattern and any kind of math problem gets my juices going.  Not as much as making quilts, but close.  Here are my drafting tools and patterns.



I used dissolving foundation sold by Ricky Tims to make the patterns for the pickle dish units.  By drawing them 3 on a page, I was able to use an 8-1/2 x 11" sheet to print 3 units.


These were cut out and used for the foundation base.  I discovered years ago that precutting the pieces 3/8" larger than the final size makes it so much easier to do foundation piecing.  Here is a photo of the pattern.


When you cut strips of fabric that match the width of the pre-cut pieces, you can cut a lot of them in short order and not waste very much fabric.


I started in the middle of the pickle pattern because I wanted the white background to cover the green pieces.  I prefer to use a foundation - whether paper or a dissolving stabilizer - that is cut out on the sewing lines.  This way, you don't have to remove all the pesky little pieces of stabilizer in the seams.  PLUS, you can mark the seams lines accurately at the edge of the foundation.  It's so much easier to line up the sewing lines than to match the edges when you're sewing concave and convex pieces together.  


Sew directly on the line.  Fold the sewn piece in place and crease or iron.


Flip the piece over.  Place a postcard on the next sewing line and flip the foundation back.  


Place an add-a quarter ruler against the card and trim the seam to 1/4".  


Pick up the next piece even with this seam. Take it to the sewing machine and flipping the foundation back in place, sew on the line again.  


This process continues until the entire foundation is covered.  Note that I allowed a lot of hang over so that I would be able to add the 1/4" to the outside edges after the pieces were sewn and pressed.  





I have liked foundation piecing in the past and am sure that I will enjoy the process on this large quilt too.  But this time, I won't have to tear out the foundation or worry about the points being perfect.

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