Drunkard's Path Quilt Finish!

It's done. Another UFO is completed. And I can't believe I designed the whole quilt around the vintage purple and white Drunkard's Path squares.

This is my third quilt made and completed in a year and a half thanks to the pandemic. Many, many thanks to wonderful Lori M. who long arm quilted two of the quilts including this last one. She did an outstanding job on the Drunkard's Path Quilt using all different designs to fit the various squares and relate the designs back to the original Drunkard's Path squares.

After getting it back from Lori I brought Eva, my new Featherweight, downstairs to the dining room table (for more room) to sew the French bias I had ready to the quilt edges. Notice the little acrylic square on the needle right: it's an ingenious gadget from The Featherweight Shop, their Adjustable Seam Guide. It's very easy to use and comes with instructions and the screw and washer to set it up to the correct width. I'm using my 6" ruler to measure from needle to the seam guide. 

A French bias is just a bias strip folded and pressed the long way so there is one raw edge and one that is a fold. The raw edge is lined up to the already trimmed and ready (again by Lori) quilt right side raw edge.

Corners are folded up and back down to get the diagonal fold with stitching stopped before the corner and started again after the corner. After it's all sewn on the bias is pressed away from the quilt in readiness for hand stitching it down. 

The bias is folded over the quilt to the quilt back and stitched down, and the corner folds are also stitched both front and back. I sewed one side a day...Love having a goal and knowing when it would be completed!

I'm so happy to have designed this quilt! Another UFO completed, so what next?? Besides working on an embroidery project I could start to tackle the Featherweight Folding Sewing Table....

Happy Stitching!

Wonky Drunkard's Path

My grandmother gave me 12 drunkard's path quilt squares in the late seventies or early eighties...in purple and cream, no less.  She bought them at a church rummage sale in Cleveland, Ohio. I planned to make a quilt out of them, so I bought coordinating fabrics and packed them away to work on when we shipped to Germany in 1985. Obviously, I didn't make the quilt. Until now.

I'm clearing out UFOs and I had promised myself I would get this done after finishing the Medallion Quilt. I bought fabrics at Chadwick Heirlooms up in Richmond, VA, where the selection is amazing! Yes, you read that right, I bought MORE fabric because I decided what I bought in 1985 was not quite right except the muslin, which I'm using. After washing the muslin and the drunkards path squares I was ready to start. The twelve squares weren't enough to make a quilt so I designed and made 4 sashed tulip squares for the center with the drunkards path ones surrounding them.

Here are the completed tulip blocks in the dappled sunlight.

Well...the drunkards path ones were wonky. WAY wonky. Now who's to say who made these?...someone young or old, probably on an old featherweight machine. But the squares weren't too square, and the seams were, well, wonky. After re-stitching a couple of seams, and pressing them as best as I could (the seams were flipped every which way), they looked a lot better after I squared the seams up. There was hope at last!

Four squares for top and bottom, and two on each side to frame the tulip squares. I love bringing out my featherweight to sew these together!

The tulip squares went together well. I made two borders around them, more or less to make sure the center fit the purple ones. It took a while to fit it all together but it has worked out fairly nicely. 

Now I just have to figure out what borders I will do next!