Sunday, October 29, 2017

Rail Fence Checkers

LEADERS AND ENDERS

I'm not a big fan of the rail fence pattern.  It's just not my style.  But when Bonnie Hunter came up with the added checkerboard units, I decided to make it.

I was getting ready to head to Otsego Lake for 10 days of solo time, so I bagged up the pieces for the fireplace quilt and kitted up what I needed to get a good start on the rail fence.

For the checkerboards, I have plenty of solid black, and both solid and tone-on-tone white fabrics.  i started strip-piecing them and already have a nice bag full of 4-patches.  Each block will require three 4-patches.





For the rails, I emptied my bins of 1-1/2" and 2" strips and squares and started in.  This would be my first totally scrappy quilt, but I did want at least to have some balance among light, medium and dark fabrics, plus a variety of colors.  I cut 6-1/2" lengths of pretty much everything I had in those widths (trimming the 2" strips to 1-1/2"), then dug into the color-sorted stash bins.

Being an OCD-type, I didn't want to waste a thing.  So I had 5 piles going:  strips 1-1/2" x 6-1/2" for the rails; squares of various sizes from strips less than 6-1/2";  selveges for a future project; dog bed filler (pieces narrower than 1-1/2"); and shreds-and-threads that actually had to go into the trash.  Note, that is the smallest pile!

Piles piling up!  (Please overlook the leftover lunch plate). Pieces for the dog-bed bin and shreds on the left.

Fence rails

Squares (5", 2", 1-1/2") and selveges
I sorted the rail strips into color families and took a photo of each group.  Then I made a copy of each photo and converted it into gray-scale to determine whether a fabric was light, medium, or dark.  Some fabrics surprised me, not what I thought they would be.




This is the teal family.  They look mostly pretty much the same to me; the 3rd and 4th from the left in the bottom row are certainly darks, but the others...?











But looking at them in gray-scale, the differences do show up.

I think the dark area on the left is just the hole in the sewing table where the machine goes.  My machine was getting its well-baby checkup when I took these pics.

Do you know that they sell special red glasses for quilters that enable you to see your fabrics in gray scale?  I'm sure there was a reason for them back in the day.  But almost everyone has a cell phone now with a camera.


Since I was sewing these on three different machines, I measured them again before I sewed a light/medium pair to a dark/medium pair.

I've made a couple of blocks but I'm still not sure I like this.  Bonnie Hunter says that "if it's still ugly, you didn't cut it small enough."  Well, these strips aren't all that small, I deliberately did not try to pair up strips according to color, and I was using up a lot of fabrics that I didn't like in the first place.  Oh, well, it's all just for fun.  And who knows what it will look like when it's done?  (You will, dear readers.  But it will be a while).

Have a happy Halloween!