Triple Dip with a Extra Bit... Runner for the TV table

In the summer of 2011, when I was first discovering what it meant to quilt, I went on a summer-long shop hop.  During the shop hop I found oodles of fat quarters from the French Laundry line.  I bought them, thinking I would do something with it for our family room. 

Before I took my Basics Class, I attempted to make a quilt using these fat quarters.  It was disastrous.  No, it was.  I threw the thing away and signed up for the class.  Since then, the smaller stash of fq's sat there taunting me.  Then I bought this itty bitty pattern called Triple Dip.

The Tv table before the runner... and minus all that dust.
On screen: Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier

But it was too itty bitty.  39" in length is fine, but 13" width was too skinny.  So add two rows.  Easy? Not easy. Mental math was never my strong suit.  It really isn't.  But, I remember 5th grade math. If you can't figure it out in your brain, draw a picture.  This is the sketch I created on my iPad.  It helped me understand how many squares I'd need.  

My sketch

And the runner!  I like how it turned out...

Oh lordy, quarter square triangles!  You can see from this bird's eye view, that qst's aren't my best block... 

I love the back.  And look, fairly straight lines.  

So... I should tell you the thread story.  My hubba-hubba (my online name for my spousal unit) was out doing errands one cold February Sunday.  He took my car.  I wanted to work on projects and didn't want to schlep out and go back to where the hubba-hubba had just been. So I asked him for a favor.  Would he go to the quilt store and pick up some thread for me so I could quilt this runner?  (He was a block away.) He would, but I needed to call the quilt store and get the product.  I called them: I was looking for Aurafil in brick red. I explained I was working with a French Laundry red fabric.  They were familiar with it but wanted a picture.   I promised to send a picture to the hubba-hubba's phone.  When he came home, it was perfect. He said that five people were anxiously awaiting the picture and all conquered with the choice.  It was a perfect match... so much that I had a devil of a time with finding the thread as I was sewing the binding.

and my made-by tag. 

and the finished look:

On screen: The Lavender Hill Mob with Alec Guinness

The Math Confounds Me

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Figuring It Out

I'm not so good at math. When I took the GRE for library school, I excelled at the logic portion, but math and spatial reasoning? I'm strictly remedial.

The whirligig pattern calls for cutting the 3x3.5 rectangle at an angle. You might be surprised how long it took me to figure out how to cut 1.5" from the right to 2.5 to the left (I'm writing this without the pattern in front of me.).

My solution? Painters tape on my cutting board with pen marking the spots to place my ruler.


It might not be perfect, but it worked. If you have tips, I would love to read them.

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Thinking for Myself

I started project #2 last night. After practicing the instructions on a piece of paper, I started cutting my layer cake blocks based on what was written on the blog. After cutting about nine blocks, I started thinking that maybe I was cutting too much fabric.

I emailed the creator of my new fancy blogs. It was true, I was cutting way too much fabric. Instead of 3-3 inch strips, she wanted 1-3 inch strip. Now I have to decide if my quilt will have two or three whirligigs of the same fabric, or restart and have different whirligigs.

One of things I've discovered about quilting is that you can do what you want.... it doesn't matter. I haven't met the quilting police, but I've read they exist. I do think that if I set up these blocks in a pattern, it will be okay that the fabric is repeated.

Don't look now, but I think I learned something.