by Ann
Last week, while we were at the CLH celebrating the official end of Tax Season, my first order of priority was to finish the 1920s period dress that I started to work on about 2 years ago when Marty helped me alter the pattern. Then I decided to make a muslin. It fit just fine. Then I cut out the fabric and discovered that I had cut the facings backwards, (in my defense, the pattern doesn’t have an obvious right and wrong side) and I didn’t have enough fabric to re-cut them. So that meant purchasing more fabric in a matching solid navy because so much time has elapsed between the fitting and the muslin and the cutting that I couldn’t find the original fabric. And then more time elapsed before I got around to cutting the new facings. I finally resumed work on the dress around Christmas time (I think), and I was determined to push to completion. Which, as you can see, I did!
I really like this dress. Much better than my other 4 period dresses. It fits well; it’s simple; and it doesn’t have any mended tears or holes. I’m tempted to make another one before I forget how, but if I do, I’d like to make it in a tone-on-tone print with a matching calico band instead of the rickrack. And that would involve making yards and yards of double fold tape. And I really prefer piecing projects.
So when I finished the dress, I treated myself to Fun with Fabric. I was intrigued by the “Chopping Block” article in the March-April 2012 Quiltmaker. The technique involves making a basic 9-patch block or a 9-patch variant, cutting the block into fourths, and rearranging the pieces into a new block. I wanted to try the Hourglass or Grecian Design block, but I couldn’t come up with 3 fabrics that would work well together from the assortment of fabrics that I had brought with me to play with, so I tried out the “Disappearing Nine Patch” instead. I liked it, which meant that I then wanted to make it into something useful and decided on placemats. To convert the square block into a rectangle, I made another Disappearing Nine Patch, cut it in half, and stitched the half and full blocks together. Again I liked the result, so I made a third Disappearing Nine Patch to go with the other half of block #2, and had two placemats. Here they are:
Obviously they are not identical. Neither are they the same pattern with the fabrics reversed. I think that is fun. The top placemat is displayed on top of the fabric that will be used for the binding. It is the same print in a complementary color way. The backing, which has yet to be purchased, will be a tone-on-tone cream/beige, and I’ll quilt in the ditch around the print patches with brown thread that matches the background of the print. I like them.
And so, obviously, does Pug. (-:
Because I’m here at work right now with my fancy-schmancy microphone headset for screencasting, and my fancy-schmancy screencasting software, I made a 30-second video to show you how to make a working link. It’s in the post right above this one, or you can view the video directly here.
It worked!! How totally awesomely cool!