Fun with pre-printed panels

Years ago, one of my quilting friends used a large polka-dot fabric to make a miniature faux Drunkard's Path quilt.  She just cut the polka dot into 1/4ths and sewed them together.  About that time, I found a pre-printed panel for making pillows with a circular motif, and a striped fabric that went with it, and decided I'd give it a try.  I cut each of the circular pillow panels into 1/4ths and then sewed them back together, treating them as if they were Drunkard's Path blocks.  The striped fabric made a nice border.  Since I found both the panels and the striped fabric on sale, it was an inexpensive quilt to make, and was donated to a charity.

If you look carefully at the center of the quilt top, you can see where the panels were cut and then sewn together again.  Since there's all that busy floral stuff going on, I only had to be really careful when matching up the more geometric circular design between the wreath and the center bouquet.  It was fun to make and went together really quickly.  If you run across a fabric that has large circular motifs, you might like to give this a try.  Like the Log Cabin pattern, there are a lot of variations on the Drunkard's Path motif.  By using large polka dots, you could make a miniature quilt, too.  I keep thinking how many more quilts could be made if I stuck with small ones, and then I'm off and running and in the middle of a queen-sized one.  Heavy sigh.  :)

This is a link to a site where you can see some of the variations on the Drunkard's Path design.  I think my favorite is the Devil's Puzzle.  I have one in progress, using 1930s reproductions and muslin.

Drunkard's Path variations.