This triangle block feels antique … I started it about two months ago, at our first virtual quilting retreat, finished it over a month ago (last year!), and just started writing the blog article last weekend at our second virtual quilting retreat.
It was so long ago that I’m struggling to remember anything interesting about the construction process. As far as I can remember, it was pretty uneventful – alternating plain rows with rows of pieced diamonds. It’s possible there just wasn’t anything interesting to report about the process.
So instead, I think I’ll use this blog post to take stock of my 2020 progress, what little there was of it. Every year I shoot for completing 30 blocks, and most years I get pretty close to that … but this year I didn’t even make it halfway to my yearly goal.
Granted, 2020 was a doozy of a year and maybe I (and everyone else) should cut themselves some slack. I only made 14 blocks in 2020, but I did make a little bit of progress on some other quilting projects too.
Now it’s finally a new year, and I’m ready for a new beginning in 2021. I’m trying to be good about setting aside enough time for quilting (that second virtual quilting retreat sure helped!), and also interspersing some work on other quilt projects so I don’t get burned out.
I’ve already completed three blocks this year, so for the moment, I’m ahead of schedule. I just need to blog about them before they become so antique that I forget how I assembled them.
Speaking of antiques, check out my new baby:
It’s a 1956 Elna Supermatic that I got from the estate of a former quilt guild member. I’ve got a newer Elna sewing machine that I love, and I’m just delighted to own this ahead-of-its time antique model.
That hatch on the top is where you put in little plastic disks that instruct the machine to make decorative stitches – a pre-computer precursor to today’s newfangled embroidery machines. The machine even came with three of the original ten stitch disks.
The metal bar sticking out the front is there in place of a foot pedal – you press the bar to the side with your knee in order to make the machine go. When the machine’s running, it sounds like it’s got a V8 purring under the hood, so it could probably use a tune-up, but overall it runs pretty well. I’m excited to try it out on one of my machine-pieced projects.
In the meantime, I’ll keep piecing my antique Dear Jane blocks the really old-fashioned way … by hand.