I have been making up the pattern for my
Irish Chain quilt as I go, using various sources for inspiration, including a
tutorial from Jenny Doan at the Missouri Star Quilt Company which helped me determine the block size: 9.5" finished. She called this particular pattern
Irish Change because it was a riff on the original pattern, so I'm going with that.
Jenny uses strip sets throughout to speed things up and I tried to do that as much as possible as well, but one yellow fabric has a directional pattern, the faintest white stripe with polka dots. I didn't do the math ahead of time for the total quantity of each print that I would need (I was just happy to have found coordinating prints with pieces 'that felt heavy enough' and started cutting) so I wasn't always making strip sets because I wanted to ensure that my stripes were always perpendicular to the centre mauve square.
Over the past week I have been sewing up a storm. There are two different versions of the pieced block, one with the dark fabric in the outer edge (above) and the second with the light on the outside edge. I just broke up the task by the number of blocks/rounds in each and made great progress sewing an hour here and an hour there.
The outer edge is made of up of three quarter sized blocks, which I really liked, so I drafted a sketch of the layout and cutting instructions to help keep me on track.
The name Irish Change got me to thinking about a clip from one of Leonard Cohen's 2013 concerts in Dublin, Ireland. He was such a Canadian icon and it's wonderful to see how the audience just totally overtakes the singing of So Long Marianne and how he's so taken aback by it all. Love the Irish! Every time I watch it I'm taken back to a concert in Ottawa where I saw him. LUV! This song was running through my mind as I sewed (and maybe there was a little humming/harmony happening on my end too 😉)....M
2 comments:
We went to a Leonard Cohen concert years ago in London, Ontario. It was wonderful! He had a wonderful sense of humour and his songs are unforgettable. Your Irish change blocks are pretty in those colours. Can’t wait to see how they come together Gail at the Cozy Quilter
Just caught up on your posts, Marie. I'm sorry to read about your good friend...I am terrified of such a sudden event changing life just like that. Anyway,you will make beautiful quilts of the fabrics. Like what you share in this post. Like so many Canadians, have always been a Leonard Cohen fan. Poetry turned into music.
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