I'm Moving!

It's decided the Farmer and I just can't play nice together so I'm taking my ball and going home. Back to the city even. No I'm not giving up on this quilt along just yet but this week really has made me doubt my abilities to see this quilt through to the queen size beauty I was imagining. I'm thinking a twin (throw) might be a better goal at this point.

I made this first block up earlier in the week with little to no trouble. I hung it on the wall and I was quite proud of that little block and even went so far as to name it my current favorite. I like that it has some small pieces so it wasn't the easiest block I had made but there is also something about the fabrics in this block that I think just set off the pattern and make it a happy little block.

Block # 12 Broken Sugar Bowl

Later in the week I was consumed by preparing for a yard sale and then a sick puppy. The yard sale went well but who knew it would be so much work. My mom and dad saved the day by bringing up portable shade Friday afternoon which came in handy on Saturday as I tend to get sunburn just from seeing the sun on tv. Still no clarification on what is effecting the bulldog but I've been doing some research online and my best uneducated guess is that it's a mild case of canine drop jaw. The vet has no idea what it could be. This brings me to Sunday when I decided to sew up my second block for this week so that I would have something to tell you guys about today. So here is the story of my EPIC FAIL.



Oops those aren't long enough



I started by selecting Block #88 Star of Hope it looked easy enough and some quick math led me to make 8 1 1/2 inch HST and a 5 1/2 inch square. It made sense at the time but oops those side pieces aren't long enough.

Fail # 2

Rather than scrap the tiny HST I searched through the book and found Block #93 Swallow. Again I did some math cut the remaining pieces and went to work. Maybe I need to take a refresher course in math because clearly this did not work out well either. So I called it a night. Monday night I was determined that I was going to make my second block for this week. I had heard a few times about Lori from Bee in my Bonnet and her tutorials so away I went. I read through all the tutorials made a trip to Office Max to get some graph paper and then got to work on Block #50 Honey's Choice. I drew it all out and figured out how big the pieces needed to be. I realized that I could use those same 1 1/2 inch HST but I was feeling lazy and rather than unpick that seam I just made some more. Everything was moving along smoothly. I realized I made a mistake in cutting my center pieces 1 1/2 by 3 instead of 2 1/2 so just a quick snip to fix the problem. I finished the block and I was pretty happy with how the pinwheels were lined up and then I went to square up the block.

Too Small

Tears were shed and that was the end of the night for me. The block only measures 5 3/4 instead of 6 1/2 like it should. So I am 3/4 of an inch short all the way around. I'm guessing I can take this apart and just cut the middle pieces a little bigger to correct the problem but hey what did I miss? On the graph paper it all lined up correctly. But then again the graph paper is drawn to the finished size of the block and not the unfinished size so maybe those pinwheels were suppose to be 2 3/4 and not 2 1/2? It's all so confusing to me. I wish I knew how to paper piece better so that I could make some of these blocks that way. In the mean time I don't guess I will be taking any more short cuts but rather cutting each and every template.