Project 10 - Harriet's Double Nine Patch Chain Quilt

This quilt top is a little different in that it uses a combined grid to make one of the nine patch blocks.  Here is Harriet's version, done in lovely antique style fabrics.

I didn't have such a hard time choosing fabrics for this project, only changing my mind 3 times :)  and ended up with these 3.

Now I know the centre one looks like I've grabbed the starch-stained calico sheet off my ironing table, but honestly, its been designed to look like that. It's from Wilmington Fabrics named Cookie Cutter Christmas.  The blue one is by Julie Rothermel from the Regency Collection III and the dark brown one is Jewelled Essentials from The Avlyn Studio.  Because of the colours, I'm going to call this my Floyd quilt.  Floyd is my seal point ragdoll cat, coloured dark brown, cream and beige with lovely blue eyes.

Again, this quilt is made from strip sets, although this time one of them is cut a little differently to make the combined grid, using only 2 fabrics of different widths, to combine with the 3 fabric strips.

Now the tricky part of putting the chain patch blocks together, is that the corner blocks must be mirror images of each other.  Looking at the picture of the corner blocks, you can see how the combined grid stip works.

I was fully aware of this while making these blocks, and carefully set up my patches to be sewn in the correct order.  Yes, of course you know what happened...........!

Yesterday was rather a busy one, with several visitors throughout the day, lots of eating and drinking (coffee) and two tradesmen to sort out some plumbing problems.  Why is it that you have no water on days when you have lots of guests?  Anyway, obsessed as I am, I nicked into my sewing room whenever I got the chance through the day, to sew up the patches.  This morning I discover that yes, I had somehow turned them around and made all right corner blocks.  Actually, I had 2 correct left corner blocks, the first 'test' ones I made.  I chain-stitched the rest and got the whole lot wrong. 

What I don't like about unpicking, besides the obvious one of having made mistakes in the first place, is that with all the extra handling and pressing, the fabric is likely to stretch and distort.  I finished re-doing them this morning and will spend some time this afternoon measuring to make sure they're nice and square.  Re-done blocks also fray more, so there is extra timming to do as well.

Today's tip is don't try to piece when distracted - the problems from getting it wrong are far worse than getting a little behind in the work.

The next step is to add solid squares to the block and sew them up.  I couldn't find the instructions for cutting out the solid blocks, but I now know how to work it out for myself.

I needed 48 solid squares 3 1/2" x 3 1/2".  You get 12 squares this size from one strip, so I needed to cut 4 strips of the 'cookie cutter' fabric.  4 x 12 = 48.  Easy Peasy.

When put together, the large 9 patch block (made up of 4 combined grid corner blocks, 4 solid blocks and a centre 9 patch) looks like this.......

I should have these put together today. The next task is to make the large 9 patch blocks, which alternate with these.

Till then..............