Goodies have arrived

After days of anticipation, the postal parcel finally arrived. Look what treasures awaited me :)



Today I pre-washed, dried, ironed and cut all the fabric required for the signature block swap. I've just started sewing the blocks - which I'm really enjoying. I'm looking forward to June when I receive my swap parcel.

and plans changed...

Well the weekend retreat didn't come together as planned. But all is okay. Instead on Saturday I went out to friends for the afternoon, and we had a sensational time. Lots of good times and laughter.

I went shopping online yesterday too, and spent WAY too much money at www.equilter.com. My purchases included:

• Quilters Companion issue 27
• Sewline trio mechanical pencil
• Sewline pencil refills
• TJs quilk quilter (for hand quilting), and
• 1.5 yards of fabric

Can't wait to receive the goodies. It will take about 2 to 3 weeks to arrive.

I also joined a scrappy siggie block swap. This came about from my membership on the Quilting Board forum. So far they have about 120 participants, covering most of the States, and international participation from; Australia , Brazil , Canada, Japan, Netherlands , Norway, UK. Exciting huh?

Registering interest to participate in the swap doesn't close off until 15 May 2010. The blocks looks relatively easy to make, and they don't have to be received by the swap co-ordinator until 15 June 2010. Block instructions can be found here.

Quilting Retreat

I've decided to live on the wild side and go on a quilting retreat this weekend. Guess what I'll be working on? All going well, I'll have some more photos for you on Sunday. My hope is to get the centre of the quilt completely pieced.

There is so much to do before Saturday. I like coming back to a tidy home and well stocked kitchen. So Friday night will be very busy. Grocery shopping on the way home. Housework in the evening. I know, it doesn't sound very exciting - but I'm hoping that this spurs me on.

Till next time...

Mariners Compass drafting

I started drafting Mum's mariners compass quilt. I have never made one before, and I am daunted at the prospect of doing such an involved pattern. I've read a few books about how to do them. Even in my collection of quilting magazines, there is a pattern or two in there, but drafting from scratch - not an easy thing to do.

I think I mentioned before that Mum selected the quilt Wild Fire, machine pieced and quilted by Alice Bessler, North Powder, Oregon, as illustrated in Stellar Journeys Flying Geese & Star Quilts (author Gail Garber). Wild Fire isn't a traditional mariners compass. I knew I would have to draft from scratch - but I didn't expect the challenge that I had. Making large templates is hard when you do not have a large compass, or a decent sized protractor. It became clear to me that I would have to resort to maths from my school days!

First step for me was to use the original design as inspiration, then work out a modified design that would sit within a 45 degree wedge. From there I had to work out how many sections I needed to divide that segment into. The circle diameter will be 40 inches (the radius is 20 inches). I drew a 20 inch square. After selecting one corner to be the centre of the circle, I made a 17 inch square from that point - so it sat within the 20 inch square. On the 17 inch line I marked off increments based on right angle maths, using Excel.

Here's a picture of the calculations.


The formulas used (in row 5) are as follows:
B5: =TAN(A5*PI()/180)
D5: =ROUND((B5*$A$2)*16,0)/16 [custom cell format 0 #/##]
E5: =ROUND((B5*$A$2)*8,0)/8 [custom cell format 0 #/#]

Cell $A$2 is 17 (the size of the internal square).

After marking off those points on the 17" square lines, I then drew a straight line from them, out to the 20" line, then back to the quilt centre.

Okay - so this sounds really technical, and probably will not make a lot of sense. Hopefully the draft pattern will make it clearer. You can see some of the numbers written on the left hand side those relate to the rounded measurements from Excel.


The arcs were created by holding the ruler at the "zero" point, placing a pencil at a set measurement (e.g. 20"), then carefully moving the ruler an inch or so along, being very careful to keep the ruler fixed at the "zero" point. Yes, painstakingly drawing the arcs "freehand".

I then divided up the wedge into sections based on what was pleasing to my eye, and continued drafting from there.

The process was repeated for another 45 degree wedge (right beside the one I just did). So now I have 1/4 of the pattern done. This 1/4 forms the base pattern.

From there the pattern has been copied onto pre-ironed greaseproof paper. Pre-ironed because it shrinks with heat, and greaseproof paper because freezer paper isn't locally available.


I am currently paper piecing the first quarter of the design. Here's what I have done so far.