Fence Rail Polka Practice

 

Fence Rail Polka

It's a good thing I have Electric Quilt to draw patterns and barely enough discipline to spend an hour a day on graphics programs, combining EQ8 with Photoshop because Malcolm Gladwell has convinced us that if we want to get good at some complex skill we have to spend 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice." C.A.D, is a complex skill.

Practicing tennis and piano playing did not work out well for me in the past but spending time in computer aided drawing keeps me entertained and I am getting better at it over time. (Just in time to be replaced by AI, I fear.)

Oops I digress. 

I have been spending time trying to draw this quilt, an idea I lifted from Bonnie K. Hunter's pattern for "Checkerboard Rails."

https://quiltville.blogspot.com/2018/03/checkerboard-railsa-quilting-finish.html

It took me awhile to figure out the repeat and then a longer while to figure out how to draw it. It's really very simple---if you think like Bonnie Hunter.

The block is the traditional Fence Rail, a square pieced of strips---above from BlockBase; 5 strips set in groups of four squares.

Vintage Examples

8 strips per square, looks about 1900.

Sixes & Sevens ---about 1900

Five --- Mid 20th c?

Set on point which gives it a different effect.

Four---about 1960

Three ---About 1920

Bonnie's Fence Rail has 6 strips----four plain-colored fabrics and two strips of alternating black and white squares. 

And the blocks are set on point creating the illusion that the black and white checkerboard pattern is background.

Well....one thinks about it and says "That woman is really good at pattern!"  

But then one wakes up in the middle of the night and says: "Polka Dots!"

A border of the "background fabric" floats the composition increasing

the illusion.