Stelle D'Oro

When I started Allietare! I didn't know where it was going. It's a mystery quilt, after all. All I knew was that it would be a full-size bed quilt.

My plan was to make the finished piece half the size called for. I would make half the number of pieces specified in each week's instructions.

If I make half the number of pieces, I will end up with a half-size quilt, right?

[Sidebar: Bonnie Hunter, the quilt designer, has requested that participants in the mystery quilt-along not post certain details, such as piece counts, to our blogs. She wants to be able to sell the pattern on her website after the quilt-along is over, and I think that's only fair. So I am not going to go into the details of how many of each type of square I thought I would need. (However, Bonnie has encouraged us to show our progress and link back to her website. Here is the link to Bonnie's blog: Mystery Monday Link-Up, The Reveal!)]

The day of the "Reveal" arrived and the finishing instructions were posted. The finished quilt has gold star blocks and  red blocks, set on point, without framing or sashing. 


Because of the absence of framing, it is something of an optical illusion when the blocks are put together. You can look at the gold star blocks, or you can look at the red blocks, but you can't look at both at the same time. If you try, you will see white squares that don't exist on either block.

Just to be clear, I appreciate the lack of framing. It's a lot less work. And I have always enjoyed optical illusions.

I confidently calculated that, as the final quilt had x gold blocks and y red blocks, I would need to make x/2 gold blocks and y/2 red blocks for my half-size quilt. How easy is that?

Very shortly thereafter I embarked on a 10-week trip.
Fast forward to my return and my resumption of this project. I looked at Bonnie's diagram and tried to imagine what half of her quilt would look like. 

I imagined my smaller quilt vertically. I imagined it horizontally.  It seemed too skinny for its length, so I imagined it with an extra row of red blocks and I imagined it with an extra row of gold blocks and I imagined it with an extra row of each. I looked at the pattern until my eyes crossed. I got faked out by the optical illusion. I couldn't "see" that the setting blocks were roughly equivalent to half of a red block. I convinced myself that Plan A wasn't going to work.

I wanted to be able to make the quilt without having to cut any blocks in half. I decided I could approximate the proper proportions by adding an extra row of red squares and I came up with something that was about 64% the size of the original quilt. I calculated how many extra squares I would need to make. Carry on with Plan B.


I started to write this blog post to explain my process for reducing the size of the quilt. At that point, I had completed 19 7/8 gold blocks and I planned to finish the 7/8-of-a-block piece later that day. I only needed to sew one more seam, and it would go fast. (Why didn't I just do it the previous night? It got hidden behind my machine, and when I realized that, I was too tired to keep going.)

Well, it turns out that quilt math may not be that simple. I needed to think some more about how to do this without having to cut blocks in half to make the size come out right.

The Aha! Moment

Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Let me take a close look at Bonnie's layout. Aha!

Somehow I got confused between the finished blocks and the setting blocks, which are basically half red blocks with a little extra piece. I thought (mistakenly) that I would not be able to avoid cutting a set of red blocks in half to reduce the layout.

But not really! The design was such an optical illusion that it fooled me. I will be substituting setting blocks for blocks cut in half. So I can make the down-sized quilt any size I want!

Here is a segment of the final layout. Maybe now you can see why I had problems and why I was fooled by the setting blocks.

Even though I had already made 19 and 7/8 gold squares (out of 20 needed), with my new understanding I elected to go back to Plan A and make a quilt that is literally "half-size". (Curiously, this will somehow require slightly FEWER than half the number of blocks needed for the full-size quilt. I counted carefully on the actual layout diagram. Four times.)

It's exponentially harder to manhandle a larger quilt through my machine for the quilting portion of the project, so this is really good news. My new insight into how to make the quilt saved me 9 blocks over Plan B. And it saves me 2 blocks over Plan A. That is the true mystery of this quilt.  How can it be exactly half the size of the full quilt, yet have fewer than half the number of blocks?

Sure, I have extra gold star squares now, but I can pick and choose among them when I do the layout. And, the really good news is I only have to make ONE more red square. I even have the sections for this already done, so it's just a matter of sewing 9 sections together. Yipee!

I definitely learned something from this, but I'm not sure what. But I do know that it was when I tried to explain this in writing for this blog that I was forced to really think it through and that is what enabled me to find the solution.

Now, let's see how many setting blocks I need . . . .

Lessons learned:

• Do not work on anything involving an optical illusion late at night.
• Do not look at the blocks in a vacuum. The setting blocks are important, too.
• If you are confused, try to explain it in writing. 
• Do not overthink it. 

Note: It was hard to write this piece in a way that would be understandable without using specific numbers and without showing photos that would give away too many of Bonnie's proprietary details. So, naturally, I blogcrastinated.  I am finishing this up about three months late. I have now sewn all the blocks together and added the border. I have several blogs in my head that I hope to write.