Charming Boston Common

I checked my blog archive and it appears I've never written about this quilt project. Oddly enough I can't even find a start date for it, that's not like me.

I think it must've been sometime before 2010, because it uses the same gridded fusible interfacing method used in my Valentine mini. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I love the Boston Common quilt pattern and decided to try one on a postage stamp scale, where the pieces finish at 1". I wanted to use the then, popular gridded fusible method that made watercolor quilts so much easier to piece. I collected lots of individual prints, to make it a charm quilt, and created the center panel.

It was fun, my idea to use the gridded fusible interfacing worked great  and I loved the color play! But that's as far as I got and I got stuck. I couldn't decide how to take the next step. Should the muslin path that comes next be unpieced, pieced in the usual manner or fused to interfacing and sewn so it has the same thickness and lack of drape? It sat in the closet for many years, while I continued to collect additional individual prints for the day when I pieced the outer border.

I've been piecing the blue-green split nine patch blocks for so long, I knew I needed a break, so I pulled this out of storage and started crunching numbers. I found some printable graph paper on point and hunkered down.

How big did I want the final wall hanging, how wide did I want the muslin path before I began the final pieced border and of course, how many one and a half inch cut squares did I still need?

Once I had the proposed finished size, it was relatively easy to work backwards from there. I also decided to create the muslin path the same way I created the center so when the top is complete, the entire thing will have the same heft.

Then I had a light bulb idea. I didn't need to cut 1-1/2" squares of muslin, fuse and sew, I could cut muslin the size of the gridded fusible. That would save a lot of fussy-ness.

I'd shopped off and on through the years for 1-1/2" gridded fusible, but it seems they stopped making it. That had been one of the things holding me back from making headway on this project. I have found it in 1" and 2", but not 1-1/2". So what to do? Buy 1" and draw your own lines.

It worked great, just like I'd hoped. I should've been encouraged.

But the muslin path turned out to be just a prototype, the method worked, but the math was wrong.

 

The next time I was in the sewing room, I started stash diving and pulling together a palette of fabrics for another quilt. I knew I was done working on this for now. It's still percolating in my mind though...