And finally the quilt

 

Coffee in my all-time favorite mug (it says, "I try to act all nonchalant but inside I'm actually chalant AF"), the sound of Gallifrey dreaming and breathing for music. It's a cold, rainy day in Montana--unusual for August but very welcome. It is a good day to snuggle up and watch old black and white screwball comedies from Criterion--and to cut quilts... and maybe shirts. 

It's amazing the things I find in the oddest places! Last week I was lamenting not having the pattern I use to make Dave's shirts. It's out of print, and a friend suggested I look on eBay for it. I did find one in Australia for about $30 (item and shipping), but I have two copies in Austin, and since I'll be there soon for a week, I decided to wait and bring one back. Then today as I got ready to cut strips for my quilt, I opened a box of sewing supplies and found two copies! I also found my mother's serger (I serge all the edges of the shirts) so I am in business! 

Before this post--and my time--gets hijacked (again), I am going to hold off on the shirts and stick with the quilt. The technique is over 20 years old and is called by several different names: Stack and Whack, One Block Wonders, and Kaleidoscope Quilts--just to name a few. The premise is that you can make an entire quilt top out of one fabric, and it will be complex and unlike any other quilt that could come out of that same piece of fabric. It can be as symmetrical or asymmetrical in design as you wish. This is not your grandmother's wedding-ring quilt. (Which is not to say I don't like wedding-ring quilts--I love them. I just don't think I'd have the patience to do one.) I like projects with tension and abstraction to them, and this quilt really fits the bill.

It's also interesting because it's all about geometry--equilateral triangles made into hexagons to be precise. I won't go into the hows here--you can look up videos on You Tube or buy books if you want top know more. I bought two books by Maxine Rosenthal et al (shown here) and am using the fabric I posted a couple of days ago (shown again at the beginning of this post). I also used the Design Helper tool on the one block wonder website to see what my fabric would like. Below is what one version of the quilt in my fabric would look like when run through the Design Helper. Got to get cutting now. More pics and a longer, more thoughtful description of the process and my experience with it later.