Overlapping Octagons is a top!

In January I started making this following a suggestion by Sujata Shah. I've forgotten where I first read about it, but immediately found it intriguing. The U&UQAL uses the photos in Roderick Kiracofe's book, "Unconventional and Unexpected, American Quilts under the radar." This book is a history of lesser-known American quilts from the first half of the twentieth century; there are no patterns just excellent photographs. Every participant in the QAL chooses a quilt from the book to copy. The puzzle is to work out from the photo exactly how the quilt was constructed.

While we know from the notes that the original was pieced by hand I chose to piece using the machine. Not a fast task as only the strip sets could be pieced easily. Assembling the octagons requires y-seams everywhere. I did wonder near the beginning if piecing by hand might not be faster, but persevering with y-seams has paid off, and I got both faster and more accurate.

My plan was to use 19th Century reproduction fabrics in red and blue and finish that stash. Unfortunately the reds were largely almost brown and didn't contrast enough with the blue, so I introduced flashes of other colours from the scrap bags to liven things up! When I finished those blues I had to use other, modern fabrics, and added modern reds too.

I tried hourglass blocks in the small squares between the red centres, but wasn't happy with them: they detracted from the octagon effect, and they made for excessively bulky joins. Removing them made it possible to continue the last strip into the triangle which gives less bulk, and enhances the octagons. Hourglass blocks would have made quilt assembly more straightforward, but they were giving a sashing and cornerstone effect - emphasising the squares, and not the octagons. More photos of the process can be found in my posts to A Basket Full of Scraps

Now I have to decide on the quilting, and having pieced by machine I think I'll quilt by hand. I would like to try doing Baptist fans, spaced fairly widely, maybe as wide as 1". But first I have to reduce a few wobbles in the piecing:

The joins above and to the right of the dogs in this photo are just refusing to lie flat. I will try pressing them again so that they do lie flat, and then sew along those creases by machine. If that fails I'll try by hand, and otherwise rely on the quilting to fix it. Not very scientific!

Have a good weekend.

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Happy sewing

Marly.