Drunkard's Path Quilt Along - Week 1

Cross the Drunkard's Path Quilt Along is being hosted by Vicki Welsh at Field Trips in Fiber.

This is my progress post for the Dad's Plaids quilt I'm making.  This is a pattern by Elsie Campbell in her book String Quilts, using thrifted shirts for the fabrics.

I finished sewing the shirt strip strata (plural, as there are several couple-yard-long pieces), with each strip about 22 inches long and between 1.75 and 2.5 inches wide, alternating dark areas and light about every 10 inches or so in the strata.

Then I starched the strata.  I'm not a big spray starch user normally, but with these shirt fabrics of various weights and flimsiness, I understand the importance of starching for this quilt.

I used a tip about covering your ironing board with freezer paper if you don't want to mess it up with loads of starch, and I did that.  Worked great!  You lightly press the freezer paper on and the heat melts the wax on the back of the paper just enough to stick it to the ironing board so it stays put.  I also put an old sheet down under my ironing board to protect the carpeting from any over spray.  It's enough I have to vacuum once in a while, you know?

Then I made freezer paper templates for the Drunkard's Path block.  It sounds like it'd be a fiddly thing to do but, conveniently, a sheet of freezer paper is 18 inches wide, so you can cut two 9-inch squares from the width of a sheet, then trace an arc 6 inches from the corner along one right angle.  You cut these pieces out and position them on the strata, allowing for a 1/4-inch seam allowance all the way around.  Press them down and then cut out the pieces.

It's not a fast process, but I like taking my time with positioning and cutting. 

So far I've got—well, I don't actually know how many—cut out.  Quite a few, but not all, probably not even half.  The freezer paper templates are reusable several times before you have to make new ones.

This is how four blocks will go together for this quilt.  I don't have a whole lot of variety in this sample because I haven't cut out all the pieces yet.

Once they're all cut, I'll lay out the quilt on the design wall (or floor, as the case may be) before sewing it together.  But just to get an idea of how it is going to go, with all those many seams in the strata, I sewed two block.  I pinned in a couple places and took my time, using the flat edge of my seam ripper as a stiletto when necessary to keep the edges together as it went under the presser foot, and they turned out fine.

Which way do you press your DP curve?  This pattern suggests pressing it toward the smaller curved piece.  I wonder if that will cause any grief when sewing the blocks together (since they won't butt together if they're all pressed the same direction).  Guess I'll find out!