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!