41. Artful Hands Raffle Quilt

Somehow I thought that because I had stopped teaching classes in my studio, I'd have extra time on my hands (?!?) and decided to take on our guild's raffle quilt project. Searching for a pattern that would accommodate beginners as well as experts and that would look good no matter whose fabric stash we raided, I also found myself looking for a project that might yield an article about how other guilds could use the pattern for their projects (still in teaching mode, I guess, but from a distance instead of in my studio). Having just abandoned half my income, I had begun to think about re-launching (really, launching, since I'd only done a few articles) my writing career, and this was a start.

The pattern shown here is a variation of the "Crossed Canoes" block, one in which an overall design is formed when individual blocks are rotated and set together. In the original pattern, long skinny triangles come to sharp points at one corner of the block, which means that when the blocks are sewn together, there are many places where twelve seams must match up perfectly. Even if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can imagine that it isn't easy to align twelve seam allowances perfectly, let alone deal with the bulk of all that fabric. Adding small triangles at the corner of each block changed the pattern so only four seams had to match up. Much easier! Using a vector drawing program on my computer, I made a scalable pattern to accompany an article about the project, lauding the ease of sewing and the wide range of fabric choices possible with the pattern. I sent the article off, supremely optimistic, and waited. And waited. Nothing. Ever. I believe the classic advice would be to send it somewhere else after waiting a reasonable time, and maybe I'll try that some time. But while I waited, the raffle quilt raised money, as it was supposed to, and was won by someone. I got distracted by other ideas, other quilts, and other events: little things like family weddings, for example--and thus unwittingly entered the "short attention span" phase of my career.