As I mentioned this the other day, I have a sort-of finish to report.
It's a sort-of finish, because it's just the quilt top. It still needs to be quilted. (Shelly at Prairie Moon Quilts is going to quilt it for me!) But, here is my Lincoln's Watch quilt top! I am very pleased with how it turned out. I love the secondary design that occurs when you put the blocks together. Although it looks like there are circles in the design, there is not a curved seam anywhere. I think this is referred to as a kaleidoscope quilt pattern.
(It was really hard to get a good photo. It was so windy the day I was taking photos that I had to snap a lot of them to get one where it wasn't flapping in the breeze!)
I'm very excited for this. It's going to go on this antique trundle daybed that used to belong to my great aunt. I blogged about it here, if you want to see it. Both will go in our study down in the basement when we finish the remodel. I painted that room a sage green, so I think this quilt will look great in there.
There are two basic blocks in the quilt. The blocks are the same, but the color distribution is different. There is this one, where the darks are in the 3, 6, 9, 12 clock positions, and the corner triangles map onto the light triangles. I think there are 50 of these blocks in the quilt.
And I think there are 49 of these in the quilt. The darks are in the 1-2, 4-5, 7-8, and 10-11 clock positions. They are altnernated with medium colored triangles. The corner triangles map onto the dark triangles in this block.
Isn't it cool how when you put these all together they make such an interesting design?!
There are a lot of points to match up in this quilt. First, you have to get all the triangle points to come together at the center of the block. That actually was not too bad....if you press your seams all to the dark, the seams nest pretty well, and it goes together nicely. But then you have to be careful to get the block square when you attach the corner triangles. Then, when you sew the blocks and rows together, there is a lot of matching. So, it was kind of slow going. I have to say, by the time I got to sewing the rows together, I gave up trying to match everything. It was too hard. I just matched the blocks at the major seams and let all the other stuff land where it did. Overall, things matched up pretty well, but don't look too closely at all my triangles. Some points are cut off. (You can see one--or two--in the "black and white block" on the left side of this photo.) But it is so busy, they really don't show.
When I laid out the quilt, it was also hard to make sure the colors and fabrics were equally distributed, because there was so much variety. After I had it sewed up, I noticed I had three blocks in a row with the at least one fabric the same in all three blocks. This was true in more than one case! But I just didn't care. When you look at the quilt as a whole, it didn't seem to matter. So, it is what it is!
The pattern is called Lincoln's Watch by Bonnie Blue Quilts. The pattern is quite simple and straightforward. There are only two pages of insructions, if you can believe it. That's because the quilt really only consists of these two blocks, which are sewn in exactly the same way except for the color distriubtion. The pattern gives good pressing instructions for creating the center part of of the block. (It doesn't tell you how to press that last, center seam when you sew the two halves of the octagon together. I pressed that seam open to reduce bulk where all those points come together.)
Also helpful was the fact that the pattern came with these two cutting templates. (This photo was taken before I removed the paper from the acrylic templates.) I did not notice until I was about halfway done sewing the blocks that the template had a hole in it for marking the centers of the triangles. This was helpful for matching the centers when the corner triangle was sewn on.
I'm not completely new to using templates, but I don't use them a lot. The instructions did not say anything about marking these dots to match up the triangles when sewing on those corner units. I think it would have been nice if the instructions had provided a little more detail on that portion of sewing the blocks. I also would have appreciated some tips for keeping the block square at this point.
Another minor limitation of the pattern is that it does not tell you what size the blocks should be after sewing them up. So, I was really flying in the dark on that one. I measured my blocks and they were a pretty odd size. I kept worrying that they weren't the right size. But most of them were coming out to be the same size, so I figured that was all that really mattered.
Also, I don't know if it's an error in the pattern or what, but when I went to sew my borders on, I did not cut them to the measurements in the pattern. Instead, I measured my quilt and cut my borders accordingly. For the first border (the skinny little black border), one of my measurements was a little off from the pattern. The other measurement was wayyyy off (like by 10 inches!). But then when I put my second row of borders on, the measurements were only different from from the pattern by about .5". So, in the end, my quilt is almost exactly the measurements it is supposed to be. So, I guess I did all right.
I do like that the pattern stressed to cut the outer borders on the lengthwise grain of the fabric. This is a very helpful tip for keeping your quilt square and to make sure your borders don't "ruffle" when the quilt is finished (i.e., because there is very little stretch and give to the lengthwise grain of the fabric.) So, I liked it that the pattern reminded you to do this.
Overall, I really liked the pattern and would recommend it. Although the sewing isn't extremely difficult, I am going to say this pattern would be best for the intermediate quilter. This is because of all the points that have to be matched up and all the points that have to come together in the center of the block. This is also because you have to be mighty careful to keep the block square as you sew those corner triangles on. With so many seams in the block, if you aren't sewing accurately, it would be easy for the block to get wonky. So, don't be afraid of this pattern. It is kind of fun. Just be fairly careful and accurate in your sewing.
Here is a tip...I had these at my retreat and people were all saying, "What a good idea!" So, I thought I would share it. When I cut all the pieces for this quilt, I laid them out in these silverware sorting containers I have. I keep these in my sewing room for this purpose. I carried these trays to the machine when I sewed. It kept all my pieces pretty well organized. Then, when I went to retreat, I just stacked these up, put them in the car, and took them with me. When I got there, I just carried them in and was ready to sew. It's very helpful and convenient. I use these a lot for quilts that have a lot of little pieces that I precut. In fact, one is already full for another quilt I cut out this weekend, and the other is on it's way to being full. I'll show you those soon. Hope this tip helps you.
Another tip....if you chain piece these blocks, like I ended up doing, make sure that you keep the same fabric on top as you are chain piecing. For example, if I was sewing a light and a dark together, I always kept the dark fabric on top. If you don't, when you open up your seam, your colors won't alternate correctly (i.e., insead of light dark, light dark, when you go to sew the next pair together, they'll go dark, light, light, dark). Ask me how I know! Trust me on this one! :-)
My friend Jill is doing a "sew along" with me to make this quilt, too. I hope she's coming along well. I also hope she'll send me a photo of her quilt top and what she thought of the pattern, too, so I can share that with you!
It's supposed to be 75 degrees and sunny here today. I am so excited!
Until next time,
Mama Pea
Love it! What a great tip.
Posted by: Jana | March 14, 2012 at 08:53 AM
Hard to believe there is not a curved seam in this quilt--what an optical illusion!
The quilt is really beautiful, all of those points must have been time consuming, but what an overall effect!
Posted by: jenclair | March 14, 2012 at 09:03 AM
OMG, i can't believe there are no curved seams! What a gorgeous quilt. Great job and i'm looking forward to seeing it when it is quilted.
Posted by: carolld | March 14, 2012 at 11:53 AM
Gorgeous quilt!! Congrats on your finish. :D
Shelly will do an awesome job. Can't wait to see it when it's finished!
Posted by: Cassandra | March 14, 2012 at 12:06 PM
Wow! Nice points. I love that pinkish color block. Good idea for the tray. Great weather here too-record breakers all this week!
Posted by: sisLH | March 14, 2012 at 12:15 PM
I made that quilt last year and I love how it turned out too. Your observations were great. I never cut borders according to patterns because mine are always a bit different so I always measure my finished quilt top center and go from there.
Posted by: Barbara Sindlinger | March 14, 2012 at 12:45 PM
Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh, that is an amazingly beautiful quilt - hard to believe there are no curved seams, it makes a gorgeous design! You must be so proud hon, this is fabulous!!!!
Posted by: Allie | March 14, 2012 at 02:52 PM
Lincoln's Watch is GORGEOUS!!!! I love it!!!
Posted by: Linda | March 14, 2012 at 03:25 PM
Great colors! And I was looking at how good your points were before I read your comment on how they didn't match up - we're all so critical of our own work because yours look very nice! I know I have a lot of projects planned but now I want to make one of these too!
Posted by: Deb | March 14, 2012 at 03:26 PM
That quilt is BEAUTIFUL!!!! I love it, love it, love it. And it will look absolutely gorgeous on Aunt Marcella's daybed. She might actually come back and haunt you, just to see it! ;-) (She'll want to touch it, cover up with it, and just look at it; it will be so beautiful on her daybed!) So I guess it was meant to be that you should have such a beautiful antique to embellish.
Posted by: PegVan | March 14, 2012 at 03:29 PM
I also really like that idea of using the silverware trays to keep your fabric pieces organized. What a great was to keep a lot of small pieces together and yet in sight all the time. No wonder you get so much done; you are so organized and together! I wish I had thought of all those ideas when I was working on my quilts. It would have saved me a lot of time and trouble.
Posted by: PegVan | March 14, 2012 at 03:32 PM
You did a great job on this quilt. I love the old fashion charm about it. Nice review, especially with the helpful hints. That will make it so much easier for someone else.
Posted by: Linda in Calif. | March 14, 2012 at 04:19 PM
Wow! What a great quilt. I love the pink and brown. I never would have believed what the blocks in the quilt looked like if you hadn't shown close ups. It looks like lots of curved seams. Just beautiful!
Posted by: LuAnn | March 14, 2012 at 04:50 PM
It's so beautiful! I can't wait to get my hands on it! It'll be so fun to quilt. Your silverware storage tray idea is really good. Now I wanna rush out and get some silverware trays, cos I need more of such stuff to stack around my studio. Heaven forbid I'd make do with what I have! How did I miss so many posts you've done lately? Guess I haven't had much computer time -- you've been so busy!
Posted by: Shelly | March 15, 2012 at 10:00 AM
Such a gorgeous quilt! I bet Shelly is going to knock it out of the park with her quilting. Love the way the blocks play and create new blocks in this pattern. You did a fabulous job putting this baby together!
Posted by: terriaw | March 15, 2012 at 11:17 AM
Love your quilt! I can't wait to see it quilted. It does look like there are curved seams. Really pretty!
The trays are a great idea! I will have to get me some just for quilting.
I nearly missed this post ...I have been gone for a couple of days. So glad you mentioned in the pen post ... need one of those too!
Hugs,
Donna
Posted by: Donna | March 15, 2012 at 07:05 PM
LOVE the quilt top!! I can see that it looks intricate with all the matching...and I have to admit that I would have a tendency to let the seams fall where they may, too! I'm thinking with all my eye-guessing that this quilt may not be the one for me to tackle! LOL!
Great tip about using the organizers.
Posted by: Deb | March 17, 2012 at 08:40 AM
I made this quilt last year and as I was making it I kept thinking what ugly blocks they were. My friends made me put 10 together to see the design and then I really loved it.
Posted by: Barbara Sindlinger | August 22, 2012 at 12:24 AM
Thanks for the review; I'm having all of the same issues you did, due to the VERY scant instructions, so I appreciate your words of wisdom. My blocks are also coming out a weird size (allllmost 6.5" but not quite) and I was worried til I read this. Thanks again!
Posted by: Julianna | March 28, 2016 at 02:42 PM