I spent time this week catching up to my students on my blocks. I had the pieces to the Drunkard’s Path blocks cut for weeks, but couldn’t seem to get them together. I pinned and pinned and pinned and pinned and pinned and something didn’t seem right. I couldn’t figure out what it was and I couldn’t sew the things with so many pins. Per chance, I picked up Ruth McDowell’s Piecing book. If you don’t have this book, get it. It is the best.
Anyway, I read the bits about sewing curves and found the problem. Clipping! I had forgotten to clip the concave part of the curve. I think I was so caught up in having problems with the block when I was a beginner and trying to make the Drunkard’s Path that I couldn’t think straight.
I sewed all the little blocks together then played with the layout for a few days and came up with the following layouts:
Good graphic look on this one.
I really like the way the middle circle comes forward in this design.
Not sure what the heck this is supposed to be, but it obviously doesn’t work.
I like the way the pinwheel type design shows up. This is my second favorite.
Again good graphic look, but the way the circles go off the side don’t appeal to me as much as the other layouts.
This is supposed to be an X, but the X doesn’t show up, because I used three colors (2 for the background) instead of just two total.
Until I finally decided on the design below. I did have a hard time deciding between this and the pinwheels:
This exercise, again, shows how great blocks are. I could make a whole quilt with this block and do each one with a different layout. I think that there is so much that can be done with block designs.
