Desperate Housewife’s Quilt: Block Nine

Curved piecing is difficult. Glue can help with that.

When I first saw block nine in the Desperate Housewife’s Quilt (http://quiltjane.blogspot.com) I was intrigued. Here Jane was going to show us how to make a block with curves without sewing any curved seams. Brilliant! Instead of sewing the seams together and risk distortion, the block is assembled with a little glue and topstitched into place. Well, I didn’t have any glue so I put this block off for a very long time until I just couldn’t hold off any longer and decided to just make due with materials I had on hand. Instead of interfacing I used freezer paper (seriously, amazing stuff for any quilter to have in their arsenal) and instead of glue I mixed up a little cornstarch in water and used my fingers to dab along the folded edges before ironing the pieces together. For the topstitching, I decided on a gradient Aurifil thread in blues to go with the blues in the block. My only regret was that I used a much smaller stitch than I intended to, which doesn’t show off the beautiful colors in the thread. Oh well, live and learn.

Desperate Housewife's Quilt: Block Thirteen

When the rain comes you’ll need an umbrella. What perfect time to make a quilt block to represent this.

I’ve been looking forward to making the thirteenth block in The Desperate Housewife’s Quilt series being hosted by Jane over at Want it, Need it, Quilt! (http://quiltjane.blogspot.com) since I first saw it. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. One thing I’ve enjoyed is being pushed to learn new techniques, and the one employed in this block utilizes something I bought years ago with this purpose in mind, along with a few others, and that is freezer paper. Building appliqué shapes and piecing them together before actually appliquéing them onto the quilt is quite easy with the use of freezer paper cut to size and lightly ironed onto the wrong side of the fabric.

Another thing about this block is that there is a lot of hand stitching, something I’ve gotten away from in the last decade or so. I’m not sure if it was just laziness or me feeling more confident with the sewing machine to piece my appliqué work, but there is something quite meditative about hand stitching something. Albeit, there is also the frustration of the block not wanting to stay in place because you are sitting on the sofa and watching television at the same time rather than using a table to keep the block composed correctly for stitching. Alas, it all worked out in the end.

I will say this, and that is with all of the hand stitching this and other blocks required, along with the feature panels I’m working on for the Fall Quilt, I think I may just be ready to tackle a full sized hand quilted quilt. For the Fall Quilt I want a simple design anyway to not detract from all of the embroidery work I’m putting into those four feature panels. I hope I know what I’m getting myself into!