Me Thinks a Beothuk Update is Needed

Our friend Sandra at mmm Quilts is hosting a fun quilt along called Beothuk.  Tomorrow she will release some tips and information to get into the next steps of the quilt top.  Sandra has FOUR different options for making this quilt.  Version 4 would be your choice if you’d like to select your own fabrics, while one through three reflects some or all of the fabrics pictured here.  I am sure think that you could still obtain the bundle from Bernie at Needle and Foot on Etsy.

Our pretty fabrics all organized and labeled

We are making Version 3 which reflects different star fabric colors in each of the four quadrants, as well as a fifth star color in the center that you may have missed.  I overlook that center star each time I look at this photo!

Beothuk photo courtesy of Sandra

Beothuk Planning

Again, I carefully made a list of all the different HST pieces we need from the instructions given two weeks ago.  The Cutting Department, a.k.a. Sue, and I went through the instructions and eventually pulled out all of the 4″ fabric pieces that she had cut.  She kept the 3.5″ blocks that she carefully labeled earlier in the month.  Sewing commenced before you knew it I had a BIG ‘ole stack of HSTs to deal with.

Exactly 96 half-square triangles (HSTs) if you want to know my definition of big ‘ole.  Details completed prior to this step was shared earlier our recent update on Beothuk.  I have been kind of dragging my feet in the pressing and trimming department.  Fortunately, on Mother’s Day we got a chance to do whatever we wanted and we wanted to watch Four Weddings on TLC and play in the sewing room.  Sue was tasked with a last minute DrEAMi project thanks to Sandra (more later) but it involves red and blue fabrics.  I had to concentrate on trimming – keep your eyes on the cutting mat and rotary cutter – no red and blue distractions allowed.  Thanks to Jan at Cocoa Quilts to remind me that I could use the 4″ Bloc Loc to trim 3.5″ blocks.  Yeah, duh.

I started trimming and then noticed that I had sewn one square or HSTs backward.  I could let it go but it like a neon blinking sign to me.  “Look at this very obvious mistake that you didn’t fix” – blink, blink.  Sooooo, that will be corrected before I trim those two.  That led to an early break after about one-third were trimmed.

Two offending HSTs just barely made the photo!

Beothuk Background Repeated

I have to share the background of the Beothuk people with you again because it seems they have been forgotten long enough.  They were the descendants of an Indian culture called the Little Passage Complex.  Good ‘ole Google informs me that they are the aboriginal people of the island of Newfoundland. They were Algonkian-speaking hunter-gatherers who probably numbered less than a thousand people at the time of European contact.  They became extinct in 1829 mostly from disease.

As I was pressing open the HSTs, I had totally forgotten what the green-labeled fabric above looked like.  I was running through the labels and mentally thought this is not part of the quilt.  Which color could this be – it looks black, it looks gold, hmm.  Fortunately, The Organizer (Sue) was available to set me on the straight and narrow and called out green.  Oh!  Yes, indeed.  What was I thinking?

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