I have not posted in a while as my hobbies have been on hold while completing other things, but I have done some designing for projects I plan to do in the New Year. I had seen a couple of wall panels on the internet that used the 'Drunkard's Path' block and I knew I had to do one as I thought they looked wonderful. I have planned for mine to go in the dining room so began looking for fabrics that would blend with our colour scheme. In the end I decided to buy a pack of Hoffman Batiks called Sandpiper. The pack contained 40, 10" squares and I would be able to cut two pieces from each square. I knew I would need some extra fabric as I needed 45 blocks, so bought another pack of 5" squares in a colour mix called Hummingbird. However, when the packs arrived I was disappointed. The Sandpiper set were much darker than I anticipated, and two of the pale fabric pieces were so pale I couldn't use them. I also wished I had bought the 'Sparrow' set instead of the Hummingbird, as there were too many purples, and not enough of the blues and teals I needed.
The sparrow colours were mainly browns and in hindsight would have been better.
I managed to find enough batiks from my stash to cut enough blocks. I spent two days messing about with the layout on my design wall. I would think it looked OK, then I would see two repeating colours too close, or too many of similar colours together. At one point I took them all down and started again! In the end I began sewing the blocks together as I thought I would never really be happy as I was already disappointed with the colours and how they looked together.
I really enjoyed joining the segments together however, and I found the process quite easy without using any pins at all.
I placed the concave piece on the bottom with the curve going to the right, then laid the pie shaped piece on top and backstitched to hold the two pieces together. Then holding the bottom piece against the foot edge and working the top piece along the edge ( pulling slightly on the top but not the bottom as the machine sewed I was able to sew the seam very easily. As I neared the bottom I used a pair of forceps to hold the fabric as it went under the foot.
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| Pulling on the top piece |
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| Pulling top piece to match edge |
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| Easing fabric over with forceps |
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| Meeting exactly right |
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| Underside view |
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| Finished block |
It didn't take me long to sew together all the 45 blocks, and the joining together of the blocks didn't take long either. So by the end of today I had pieced everything together. I have it on my design wall and I am still not happy with it. I have one light block lower left that doesn't look right, but it was difficult trying to space out the lighter fabric in a pleasing way but I am not unpicking it to put it elsewhere! So..... I will find a backing and will finish it in the New Year no doubt. Whether it will grace the end wall of the dining room remains to be seen!
I placed the concave piece on the bottom with the curve going to the right, then laid the pie shaped piece on top and backstitched to hold the two pieces together. Then holding the bottom piece against the foot edge and working the top piece along the edge ( pulling slightly on the top but not the bottom as the machine sewed I was able to sew the seam very easily. As I neared the bottom I used a pair of forceps to hold the fabric as it went under the foot.
