Clues in the Calico; Washington Sidewalk test block

I‘ve spent the past few days suffering from the headache from Hell .. and a day with the infamous headache hangover .. Needless to say there’s not been much accomplished, but I did do a few things…

I quickly read over everyone’s comments and emails – thank you all for voting in my poll and giving me your opinion .. many of you said, it’s my quilt and I should do what i want or like .. I needed everyone’s feedback as I was at a brickwall – didn’t know what i wanted, and your comments, thoughts, suggestions were what I needed to look at my quilt and these blocks with fresh eyes .. and that’s what i needed .. a new perspective and way to think about this quilt .. Thank you everyone for taking the time to help me .. heh .. i’m still not any further along, but my thoughts are moving at least and I don’t feel like I am brain dead .. well i am .. sometimes .. but you know what I mean 😉

My local library called me and said that the book I asked on interlibrary loan was in so I picked the up the book Clues in the Calico by Barbara Brackman and have found it very interesting .. if you are looking for a understandable way to date quilts or you have blocks in your possession and you think they are old, this is the book to use – she explains dating by threads, fabrics, blocks styles, quilting styles and there is a blank worksheet available in the book for you to plot your own timeline for discovery .. great book!! Also great for showing quilts with period blocks and fabrics in it too 😉

Doing the test block helped me move towards a decision at least ..Another thing accomplished is one test block – this block is Washington Sidewalk – nice block .. rather a pain to do with all those triangles .. and you put it together sideways 🙂 – after doing the testblock, i’m not sure i want to do this block .. I do like it .. but i wanted a simpler block as a ‘break’ between all the other busy blocks – As you can see, this block isn’t quite right . not sure if it was b/c of my headache hangover or what .. but I really do not want to struggle with this block – I might do more of this block later as a quilt .. but not sure right now .. will do the chimney sweep (album) block and see how that one goes. The colours I picked for this weren’t the greatest, but they were closest to the colours in my smaller pieces. That blue and green rather cancel each other out, but you do get the gist of the block – which was part of the intention.

I’m going to be doing the Chimney Sweep block next (tonight) .. worst case senario, I take the easy way out and do a double nine patch, disappearing nine patch or nine patch .. we’ll just have to see ..