Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~

Thursday evening. Not a really bad day. The sun shone some, it didn’t some, it was windy some, it was calm some, it was warm some, it was cooler some. I don’t remember that it rained or snowed, but otherwise was a normal spring day in Maine. We can’t really go for a walk this time of year anyway because the road is such a mess. As soon as it warms up again, (assuming it does) the road will turn from just potholes into stretches of mud. When a car is met it is anyones guess how much water and mud a pedestrian might wear. I am perfectly willing to wait until dryer road conditions and take my chances then. There are times that I miss my many long walks. Most the time, not so much.

We sit in the window and look around the pond and have seen the snow disappear from the side hill two or three times now. The ice cover on the pond has started to get darker again, many times lately I have listened at the window and heard the ice groaning at night. Maybe it is contemplating the biannual phase change, this time back to water from the ice. I’m ready, maybe the pond is as well. Time will tell.

In the studio I completed #20 for 2026. Another in the 65” x 76” range. An interesting side note. We discovered while we were sorting stacking, refolding and taking pictures of quilts before storage, that the measurements taken now after being quilted and washed, versus the measurement taken as a “top only” shrunk about 4” on average during the process. I thought that was interesting to learn. A bit of knowledge, that when I think about it, is probably worth about as much as most of the worthless thoughts rolling around in my head. I used to tell myself that having all the useless stuff in my head helped to fill in all the voids so the good stuff didn’t fall out. The problem now at my age, is there is so much stuff in there, I have a hard time finding the different pieces of “stuff” when I want it.

Well anyway, #20 was made to show at my Tucker Trimmer class at Sew Orchid Design in Norway this Saturday. I limited myself to only using units I could create and trim using my Tucker Trimmer. I chose to design the top around nine inch 9-patch blocks. The 9-patches consisted of a variety of different units ~ half squares, quarter square or hourglass units, and combination units. As with my normal scrap process there was no real layout or predetermined concept of what the 9-patches could look like, I kinda let them tell me what they wanted to be.

After making 20 of them I decided on this simple sashing design. I added the gold 2-1/2” finished sashing strips to the bottom of each 9-patch block, then added the brown sashing to the side of each growing block. I left off the brown on six of the 9-patch/gold blocks choosing to treat the last two of the brown on either side of the body as borders and not as part of the blocks. I added half square triangles in the corners of the outer border to easily make two sides gold and two sides brown. Was a fun quick top. 

2026-20

Hopefully, the class on Saturday will go as planned with no big surprises. Time will tell. It has been several years. I will be bringing several bags of the different sized squares for them to use as test and sample squares. I am doing this because I don’t cut my squares the same size as the Tucker people state in their directions. I prefer to cut slightly larger squares for some of the units and not have to be so paranoid about getting everything as exactly aligned, marked and sewn and still easily trim my results with repetition. To me, that is what the Tucker process allows quilters, the chance to create shapes easily over, and over and over…………. I want them to try both square sizes and let them decide which method they prefer to use. I’ll keep doing me, it sort of works for me.

There are a great many ways to design a quilt. A customer in our store once asked how one decides on a quilt design when not following a pattern. I told her the normal process was to pick an interesting block design, make it so many times you begin to get sick of it, add sashing strips and borders, quilt and bind. Voila, a quilt. That was what I did before I went over to the scrap side. Those of us quilters living scrappy lives often just randomly combine blocks, squares and units with sashing strips and borders to complete our quilts. Either way, there are so many different combinations of possibilities that I doubt I will ever try all my ideas. I have two or three floating around in my head most of the time. Some are simple and some much more intricate, some time consuming and some not so much. I still keep trying to make them at least somehow different than those before it.

I’ll let you know next week how class went. Toward the end of the class, time permitting, I’ll dump out my 3” unit bin and let them play design with laying out the units into different possible blocks. 

This shows the possibilities of a quick quilt when some of your scraps are stored as units and shapes instead of squares and strips. It works for me, I’m sure it can work for others as well.

As I went downstairs just now to get a soda I saw we had a visitor. Opie came to visit tonight to munch out under the bird feeder. I watched it eat for a few minutes then mosey off and out of sight of the outside floodlight. 

We have been leaving the light on to keep the deer out of the bird feeder. We are fussy about what species are allowed to profit from out largess at the feeder. We go through a LOT of bird food. The birds are fun to watch though and give us something to see between us and the pond. This morning we watched a lone turkey run across the pond down towards the other end. No, don’t ask me “why did the turkey cross the pond” ‘cause I got no idea. As I watched I thought it would have been cool to have seen an eagle swoop down and capture the turkey. Upon reflection, I might have gotten a kick out of it, the turkey maybe not so much though.

Hopefully, the upcoming cold stretch this weekend will be short lived and one of the last of the season, time will tell. Stay safe, enjoy your weekend, and remember still no black flies.