AN EXPERIMENT

Yesterday morning as I drank my first cup of coffee I thought, What would happen to a Disappearing Four Patch if you started with a really big four patch and you just kept on cutting and sewing.

I went to the sewing room and cut two 13" beige and two 13" red squares and made a HUGE four patch.  I made the four cuts 1 1/2" from the center, did the switch of the center sections and sewed it back together.  Then I did it again, but this time I made the cut at 2", and again at 2 1/2".  Then I thought, Maybe there should be some diagonals, so I cut the four corners on a diagonal.

That's when I ran into some trouble: it was no longer possible to keep the colours separate; beige ended up with beige and red with red, here and there.  So I discarded the center sections and then was able to keep the pattern going.

Hmmmm, that's still kind of big.  I made some more cuts and switched sections around.

By this time an hour and 45 minutes had slid by.  OK, that's enough.

I wouldn't be able to duplicate this block, but that's not much of a loss.  It will go into the "Orphan Block" bag and form part of a quilt sometime in the dim future.

Re: the stained block from the Disappearing Four Patch: I soaked it over night in cold water with a "colour catcher" sheet.  The stain migrated from the block to the sheet, and the block is just fine now.  However, the replacement is already in the quilt, so that block also goes into the "Orphan Block" bag.  Just now I had an idea: if I soak the offending cerise batik overnight, that block could also go into the bag.  Pretty soon I'll be able to make two or more quilts from these discarded blocks!

The Disappearing Four Patch top is complete, and the first purple border is on.  The purple was in my stash, and there was just enough to cut a narrow inner border and enough binding.

I wanted to white on white for the second border.  Although I bought 20 Fat Quarters of white on white at the Red Deer Quilt Show on Saturday, I didn't want to use them because the borders would have to be pieced.  So when I was in town I went to The Fabric Nook to look for white on white.  What I found: some nice white on white on the 40% off table, making it just $8.49 a meter.  I had planned to buy .35 of a meter, but since it was such a good deal, I bought 3 whole meters.  I'm really set for white on white backgrounds for a long time to come!  I should plan a few more quilts, yes?