Looking for directions
 

Hi, I am looking for directions for Grandmothers Dream quilt. You take 8 fabrics (usually floral) from light to dark, cut them into 2" strips, sew them together, cut them into strips again then "unsew" some and add them to a different block. You have one block from light to dark and one block from dark to light.

I need the directions on how to "unsew" and how to place the unsewn pieces.

I have searched the internet and found some pictures but no directions.

Pictures are here: http://sweetp-paulette.blogspot.com/...ers-dream.html

Thanks for any help,

Pati

Wow!! I love the 4th picture down, with the back of the man in it, because the "blocks" are surrounded with lights, very effective!

Jan in VA

It is a 'Trip Around the World' type block if that helps.

If you read the blog, credit is given to a woman for the pattern and instructions. you might contact the blogger for contact information

If you get the instructions be sure to post or post a link where the pattern can be bought. I would love to buy this pattern. Thanks for sharing

I think I figured it out.
 

From what I can tell, to make the two blocks (one Dark-to-Light and one Light-to-Dark) you would need two, two-inch width-of-fabric strips of each of eight different fabrics, for a total of sixteen strips. You would then sew the strips together along the width-of-fabric in your desired order, making two identical sets of eight strips. You would then cut the strips across into two-inch strips. If you have 40-inch-wide fabric, you should be able to get forty strips, total, from both sets (twenty strips each). You will only need thirty.

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The finished block has one long strip in the centre, which gets progressively shorter the farther out you go. We'll call the centre strip, Row 0, since it's the starting point.

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As for the strip-pieced strips you have, we'll divide them into two piles. One that goes dark to light, we'll call them Strip A. The other fifteen will be oriented from light to dark and we'll call them Strip B. (Note that you can leave them all in one pile, I'd only separate them because it feels more organised to me, sort of like a quilting mise en place.)

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To form Row 0, you will take one Strip A and one Strip B. You will remove 0 squares from Strip A. You will remove 1 leftmost square (the lightest square) from Strip B. You will then sew Strip A to Strip B along the seam you just removed the square from so that they make one long strip that gradients from dark to light to dark again. This will be your base for the Dark-to-Light Block. The square you removed will be your base for the Light-to-Dark block. Set these aside for now.

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For Row 1, you will again take one Strip A and one Strip B. From Strip A, you will remove 1 rightmost square (the lightest). From Strip B, you will remove 2 leftmost squares (the lightest). Remember, from Strip A you will remove the right squares, from B you will remove the left squares. Along the seams you just removed squares from, you will then sew Strip A to Strip B. You will also sew the two squares from Strip B to the one square from Strip A, making sure the squares from B are always on the left side of this newly formed strip. (This is different from the longer strip you have created at this step which always has A on the left.)

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You will then sew each Row 1 to the bottom of their respective Row 0, matching up the centre squares.

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You will repeat this process for the next six rows (Row 2-7), increasing the amount of squares you remove each time.

Row 2: Remove 2 rightmost squares from Strip A. Remove 3 leftmost squares from Strip B. Sew Strip A to Strip B. Sew Removed Strip B squares to Removed Strip A squares. Sew both to bottom of respective Row 1.

Row 3: Remove 3 rightmost squares from Strip A. Remove 4 leftmost squares from Strip B. Sew as explained previously.

Row 4: Remove 4 rightmost squares from Strip A. Remove 5 leftmost squares from Strip B. Sew as explained previously.

Row 5: Remove 5 rightmost squares from Strip A. Remove 6 leftmost squares from Strip B. Sew as explained previously.

Row 6: Remove 6 rightmost squares from Strip A. Remove 7 leftmost squares from Strip B. Sew as explained previously.

Row 7: Remove 7 rightmost squares from Strip A. Remove 8 leftmost squares (all) from Strip B. Sew as explained previously.

After you have finished all seven rows, you should have two (slightly-more-than)half-blocks. Repeat the process for Rows 1-7. This will give you the remaining side of each block.

(I don't know how to edit my post.)

I have a correction: You will only need 29 strips. You can certainly cut the extra one if you want, but as long as you have no major mistakes, twenty-nine will do.

After you have finished Rows 0-7, you will repeat the process for Rows 1-6, not 1-7. After that, you should have 1 remaining strip. You will use the lightest and darkest squares from that strip to finish off each block. The remaining six squares are not needed.

Now, that being said, you can easily go along with what I already described, you just would have extra strips in the end, which really isn't a horrible thing (beats winding up with not enough strips), I just felt the need to correct myself. Honestly, whenever I actually make this, I will probably wind up cutting 30 strips, anyway, just so that I -do- have extra, because I like having extra.