During the past quilt retreat, I resurrected some fairly old projects to take with me to work on. I tend to do best when creating on my own so I wanted to take something that wouldn’t require me paying attention too closely while I worked. To me the fun of a retreat is chatting and catching up with old friends as well as making new friends. So, if I am going to be focusing on chit chat and quilt gossip, my sewing needs to be mindless.
Well, I blew that.
The nice little pile of partially sewn blocks I chose were from a cottage retreat approximately 19 years ago (so my friends calculated....). The pattern is Hidden Wells, an ingenious pattern by Mary Ellen Hopkins. If you google Hidden Wells, you can see many lovely samples of and numerous tutorials for this pattern.
Somehow I failed to see the simplicity of this pattern that weekend. I struggled to make sense of my blocks which I had already sliced many, many years ago. Creating this pattern involves strip piecing fabric, cutting out blocks, slicing those blocks and then re-arranging the resulting segments to create new blocks. Exasperated with myself, I finally packed it up and worked on another project I had brought with me. When I got home, I tossed the pattern out, took the sections of blocks, added alternate black blocks, sewed a couple of borders, grabbed a chunk of some wild bright fabric for a backing and loaded it in on longarm.
Now I just need to add the binding.
The pantograph I used is one I received with my machine. Excuse the lumps and bumps in the photo....I guess I could have smoothed it out first.....opps.....
Now that feels better....and they don’t call me the crayola kid for nothing.
