Wow! It’s been 10 days since I last posted anything here. Where did the time go? In fairness, the weather has been so good that being out in the garden or the gazebo has been the main attraction. We had our first picnic meal of the season out under the gazebo a week ago Friday — fresh hake from a Duncannon, Wexford fishmonger who sells from his van in the nearby SuperValu carpark. Getting there early is key and I was, for some reason, up with the birds, and out to the shop for the OAP time slot because we needed a few things to get us through the weekend. Add to that, salad made from our own spring onions and lambs lettuce (and a tin of peas for Robbie—because it’s fish, after all), and you have a feast!
Paths
I tackled the first of many small garden paths—this one in brick because it follows the clothes line and it’s critical to have a solid, dry path to follow when you’re hanging laundry in the winter months.
I had plenty of beautiful old bricks, (from Mark at Landmark Salvage) and just enough sand for the small strip that will eventually feed into the main path, yet to be dug out and currently marked by a lot of blue cardboard. With all of the paths, we want to have them look like they’ve been there since the house was built over 200 years ago. I have left myself with a problem as there’s quite a drop off at the end where the main path will be gradually sloped. It will be fine in the end but, for now, I have to mind myself so I don’t step out into thin air while hanging on to a clothes peg!
I have to confess, I rather like hard landscaping. You really get to see what you’ve accomplished by the end of the day. Plants, on the other hand, take a while to settle in before filling in the spaces you’ve left for them to grow into. It’s slow and takes patience.
COVID Distraction
Speaking of laundry, the major distraction of the past week is COVID-19 related. A little over a week ago, I read a report in The Guardian suggesting that everyone should be wearing a face mask because you may be carrying the coronavirus—indeed, are your most infectious—for up to a week before you even experience symptoms yourself. This is disquieting. So, my first notion was to see if there was a way I could help people out by supplying them with bits of fabric from my (it turns out) humongous stash of quilt fabric… everything from small pre-cut squares to 9 yard swathes intended for backing bed-sized quilts. I didn’t BUY all of this fabric. Bins of it was gifted to me by my friend Delia who was moving from a grand Victorian in Newtonville to a tiny apartment in New York. No room for her to quilt, let alone to stash fabric.
9-Patch block alternated with Hourglass block using scrap fabric.
That had to have been 20 years ago or more and I’m only now appreciating how much fabric she gave me. While Delia’s interests shifted way from quilting to writing and NYC cultural diversions, my life took a turn with a change in jobs, a jump to a 70 hour work week and a return to Grad school. The quilt I was working on at the time got rolled up and stuffed under the bed where it stayed until the son for whom it was intended, decided to get married. A new wedding quilt in the works meant taking THAT quilt off the frame and folding it up to be continued at a later time—and place. That turned out to be here, in Ireland, in our new home where it graces our bed in the winter time.
Back to COVID. The mask idea was not a great success. The no-sew versions didn’t work really work with quilt fabric and the ones you could sew really needed specialized fabric and elastic that, while I know I have yards of it somewhere, I simply cannot find. Besides, I didn’t want to get involved in the manufacturing of face masks given that there’s no guarantee they would prevent the spread of the virus. They are just another of the many precautions that help. If it was at all feasible, I thought I could offer my friends and neighbors something to do while they were on “lock-in,” if they were so inclined. But now I was knee deep in the fabric I had dug out of boxes and bins, washed, line dried and ironed—yes… IRONED! I, who have avoided buying any clothes that require pressing of any description for the past decade, have spent hours every evening of the past 10 days ironing yards and yards of fabric.
The Challenge
Well, I’m deep into it now… stacks of folded colorful fabric all over the sitting room. My husband says our house smells like an industrial laundry—which is not a bad thing. There are certainly worse! I’ve always loved the smell of laundry fresh off the line after a day of sunshine. Ask anyone who’s been a neighbor of ours over the past 40 years.
Here’s my little confession: I think I was just waiting for an opportunity to get all those sewing and quilting things sorted out so I could get started on a project. Clearing the decks, visually organizing what I have to see if there’s an idea buried in there. It’s difficult to see ideas if everything is in a box buried deep in a cupboard. That goes for writing a book, making a garden, or designing a quilt.
I willingly gave up on the mask idea, but when I admitted that to our Community Virus Response leader, Richard, I also mentioned that I thought it was too bad we couldn’t make a community quilt. He seemed to be intrigued and, when I told him I used to teach Basic Patchwork years ago, he suggested I put a plan together. His idea was that we could make something to hang in the Heritage Centre. My idea is that whatever we make could be raffled off to benefit Tidy Towns or some other charity. Richard suggested I put together a plan and “directions” and he’d put it up on Facebook to see if anyone is interested.
The basic 9-Patch quilt block. Notice that this is one of the two blocks in the quilt shown above. *
I went back to the premise of my first Basic Patchwork class: a Sampler quilt based on 9-patch construction. Any block design that can be constructed from 9 equally sized squares will follow the same construction method: Three squares per row, three rows per block. Each square can be constructed from other shapes: triangles, rectangles, squares. As long as each of the 9 squares finishes at 4″ and each block is 12″ plus 1/4″ seam allowance all around, you can combine all different kinds of 9-patch blocks into a harmonious quilt top. Of course, other construction methods work too… but this is about learning simple techniques that get progressively more complex while using the same basic framework.
I started doing research from my library of quilt books and magazines (when I wasn’t washing, hanging out on the line, ironing, or gardening) and found over 60 different quilt blocks and a few lovely variations that were roughly the same as another block but carried a different name. The original course I taught was 12 weeks long so we concentrated on 9 patches and the last few weeks were focused on assembling and fastening the quilt layers. The original patches included the simple ones, each week learning a new design:
- Row 1: 9-Patch, Shoo Fly, Monkey Wrench,
- Row 2: Ohio Star, Variable Star, Swamp Angel,
- Row 3: Tulip Lady Fingers, Quatrefoils, Weather Vane.
Not everyone wanted to move on to the more difficult squares so they were able to do variations on the easier blocks by reversing the lights and darks of the fabric pieces. It never ceased to amaze me how the dullest or most garish of fabrics, when combined with others into new patterns yielded something beautiful—it was a magic revelation with each new piecing.
So I will put this together and start a new category on this blog called 9-patch Quilt Challenge. To be frank, even if no one is interested, I will start creating one of each of the 65 different “9 patch” quilt blocks I found. I have a head start. At the bottom of one of the bins of fabric I found two completed blocks, Shoo Fly and Pinwheels, and lots of squares and triangles already cut!
Back to the Garden
However, this is a GARDEN post, so here are a few images I collected over the week… and my intention to make something out of all the “garden” titled quilt blocks I’ve found.
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Formal Garden
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Garden Path
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Love in a Mist
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Tulip Lady Fingers
This week in the garden…
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The Three Sisters raised bed
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Newly planted flower bed
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Find the forget-me-nots
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Blowsy Tulips
* Note that the sample blocks are grayscale. The color value of the patchwork piece (from light to dark) gives you an idea of how the block is set up so that the maker can decide whether to follow a simple monochromatic design (all the pieces in different shades of blue) or a polychromatic design (two or more hues of varying shades.)
Like many of us stressed out on COVID news, I retreat to two particular shows to soothe my nerves. 
