In my last post (which I wrote at the end of May, but forgot to publish until today - oops, my bad!) I mentioned the fact that my husband and I drove up to Connecticut for a week at the beginning of June. We needed to be in New Haven at the home office of the Knights of Columbus because he works for them, and there were meetings all week. While we were there, I mentioned to some people that I was making a raffle quilt for the International Convention, which is going to be in Philadelphia this August. I plan to have one block for each jurisdiction, and each block will be the same size and overall outline, but each one will be unique. This is to represent the fact that each jurisdiction is equal to the others, but each is also unique. Since the convention will be in Philadelphia, I'm making a scrappy red, white and blue quilt, with eight inch modified Sawtooth Star blocks.
I also told the story of how they added a new jurisdiction last month, which caused me no end of sleepless nights while I figured out how to set 73 blocks, as opposed to 72. 72 is so nice and even - 8 by 9, straight set, no problems! <sigh>.
Anyway, I did finally figure out how to set the 73 blocks. I was planning to set them 9 by 9, and have a blank white block on the end of every other row. So there would be 9 star blocks in the top row, 7 in the next row (with two blanks on either end), 9 in row 3, 7 in row 4, etc. until the last row, which would have 9 blocks again. Here is a picture of that layout:
It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but the blank blocks would go on the sides, where my design wall (a.k.a. living room carpet) is showing through.
Did you notice that I said 'WAS planning', and 'would go'? <Big, BIG, sigh>. On Sunday morning, there was a breakfast meeting, and the speaker mentioned that there were 74 jurisdictions. WHAT??? Did I hear him correctly? Did he make a mistake? Surely, he meant 73, right?
I followed up with him after the meeting. He didn't make a mistake. They decided to split one jurisdiction in half because it was so big. So for the fraternal year 2015-2016, there are 74 jurisdictions. Which means I need to come up with a setting for 74 blocks. AAAARRRRGH!
The only good thing about an 8 hour drive back home from New Haven is that it gave me LOTS of time to come up with a new setting. So by the time I got home, I had a couple of options and was able to sleep that night! Here is the one I decided to use:
The center and the two missing blocks on each side will be blue 'blank' squares, for which I''ll probably use some of the border fabric for consistency. Then I'll fill the diagonals with white side square triangles. So this is IT!!! If they add another jurisdiction, too bad, so sad! I absolutely have to get this done by the end of the month, because July will be busy with traveling and the convention is the first week of August!!
It has really been a busy spring so far! I'm really glad I retired when I did. I don't know how I would have been able to do everything this spring if I was still working full time. After my last post, I finished the Pinwheel Fancy quilt (more about that later) that was an add-on Scrap Addicts project, then started cutting blocks for the raffle quilt. I knew that I would be away from home for a couple weeks and I wanted to be able to work on it while I was away. I hit upon a way to keep all the pieces for each block organized so that I could work on them without getting them mixed up - little zipper sandwich bags!
My hubby and I were away at the Knights State Convention from Thursday thru Sunday. On that Saturday, I got up and drove 2 1/2 hours to my niece's baby shower, then turned around and drove back to the convention. When I got home on Sunday, I threw some things in the washer and packed.
Then I drove about 5 hours to my sister's house. She needed to have a hip replaced, and so I went down to help her. (Tangent alert!) Am I the only one who considers North to be 'up' and South to be 'down'? As in 'We drove up to New York for the weekend' or "We drove down to Florida and saw the Everglades'? Anyway, back to the topic at hand!
I got back this past Thursday, unpacked the suitcase and started packing again. We're heading (up ;->) to New Haven for the week for my husband's job. The day after we get back, I need to be in Pittsburgh at 11 a.m for rehearsal. The Concert Chorale that I sing with is going to be performing at the Three Rivers Arts Festival at noon that day! They even have us on the website!
http://www.3riversartsfest.org/fest_event/pittsburgh-concert-chorale-2/
I was in a quandary about my Pinwheel Fancy quilt because another Scrap Addict was using a similar color scheme as my original idea. After much agonizing, I decided to go in a completely different direction. I still used black as my accent triangles, but I used various brights in the large triangles. Then I made a variation on the block and expanded it to make a center medallion. The small pinwheel blocks became a pieced border around the center medallion, set off with two narrow black borders. Some little kid is going to absolutely adore this one! I sent a picture to my Quiltmaker contact, and she says that in addition to the video shoot in August, she is planning to feature it in a blog post! Yay! I'm seriously thinking about writing up the pattern and publishing it. I'll probably make one change to the piecing; other than that, I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I can't post the picture until after it has appeared on the blog, but once the blog post is up, I will link it here and on Facebook.
