A little bit tipsy

And the early bird gets the worm. For the very first time so far in this little quilting bee, I am actually finished with a block quite early in the month and already sending it out in the mail! Every other block so far I have sent out close to the deadline, so this is a good switch for me.

Here is Allison's block for May, a "drunkard's path" block:



Like I have said before, this quilting bee has been great already at pushing me out of my comfort zone in trying new techniques. First was the wonky log cabin, a first for me, then paper piecing, and now the dreaded curved seams, which actually aren't too bad after all. I'm pretty excited the seams actually matched up on the circles, but due to the way you have to put the two pieces back together on the curved seam, I can't for the life of me get the block to lay absolutely flat. It's flat enough, but I sure wish it would lay even flatter.

Here's a picture of what each step looked like before sewing the curved seam, almost like a little porcupine with all of the pins I had to use:



There was a great tutorial Allison referred us to for this. I feel I am getting so spoiled by all of the awesome tutorials out there in BlogLand, and I'm constantly amazed by the talent and creativity it must take to dream up some of these things.

Believe you me, I now have a new appreciation for these "drunkard's path" blocks as well. I believe this is the block that one of my grandmother's quilts is made out of, the red and white quilt I have sitting on my ivory sofa. If that is the case, it has definitely given me a whole new appreciation for that quilt since I can now envision just how incredibly long it would have taken my grandmother (back in the 1910's, mind you) to make that entire quilt out of these blocks. Maybe the name of the blocks is referring to the fact that someone would need to be quite drunk to be crazy enough to make an entire quilt out of them, haha. Talk about dedication!

Thanks, Allison, for a fun block! Maybe I'll get the nerve up to make some more eventually...