A FRUSTRATING Quilting Sunday...

Yesterday I posted about the Fourth of July, today I am posting about my most recent quilting activities.

Sunday I spent 2 hours sorting through my scraps and stash.  My scrap stash is still pretty small, I have only been quilting seriously for about 18 months, so at this point I don't have bins and bins of scraps sorted by color, but I will have enough to start sorting by color soon.  Yesterday I sorted my scraps into two groups.  The first will be cut into squares or bricks, the second will be cut into strips.

I then sorted through my stash and guess what I found.... That black and silver swirled fabric that I was going to use to back Jonathon's quilt.  I knew I'd find it after Jonathon's quilt was complete!  Oh, well, it will work well on something else.

SO, after sorting I was ready to get to quilting, so I completed my Civil War BOM stashing and finalized the blocks, so I am now all caught up, blocks 1-10 (2 each month) are complete.

Each BOM is a 9 patch.  Each one is made twice, once with dark
emphasis, and once with light emphasis.  Both blocks are then sashed
with the star pattern seen above.

This is my favorite fabric combination of the blocks.

This is my least favorite fabric combination, but I chose to do this
BOM as received and I have intentionally NOT substituted fabrics
for any of this BOM Kit.

Another combination I kind of like... At first I didn't like this
combination at all, but it has grown on me as I assembled it.

I then worked on a project that I can't share yet, but will soon.

And then, I finally did it... I finally got started with my Farmer's Wife Quilt Along!!  I am weeks behind because I decided to start so late, so I decided to catch up over the next three weeks.  I decided to organize myself.  I printed out all of the templates taking care to "Print at 100%" as I heard several other quilters indicate that they had issues as a result of printing at the wrong scale.

I cut them all out, I organized them into baggies.  Then I retrieved the templates I would need for the first 6 blocks and I chose fabrics for those first 6 blocks.  And then, after MUCH anticipation, I finally made my first cuts...

There's my first block... All cut and Ready to
assemble, and there are the templates I'm going
to use for the first six blocks.  And there in the
upper right corner are the fabrics I'm about to
use... I was so excited to finally get started, I
forgot to take any assembly photos..

After I started assembling the first block, I found myself frustrated.  It wasn't working as I expected it would, things weren't lining up properly, it didn't "feel" right, but I pressed on figuring that I would at best find my frustration wasn't justified, and the block would turn out just fine, or at worst I would discover that I wasn't doing something right.  So I pressed on and completed the block...

So, here is the completed block... Corners are cut off, edges don't meet,
it isn't square...  It's rectangular.  It is everything I DID NOT EXPECT!

Each block is supposed to be 6.25 inches square upon completion...
And YES, that block is only 5.5" inches that way...

And a hair over 6" that way...

So.  What HAPPENED!!  Well, after pulling my hair out for a few minutes, and being disgusted with myself I decided to reconstruct my steps.  Over the next hour I figured out two things.  First, my needle has moved slightly and I was not sewing with a 1/4 inch seam, it was slightly OVER a 1/4 inch.  I now need to figure out how to adjust that... must be something loose inside ole Betsy.

And I also figured out that ALL of my templates (except one) are the wrong size.  It turns out that for whatever reason I need to set the print command to print at 100% for EVERY individual document.  So the first one I printed was right (remember, I had read about this very issue so I made sure to adjust it)... However, EVERY other one was wrong.  I started printing with the last template so literally not one of the templates I used for this first block was correct.

Here is a sample of the impact...

The Yellow line is the edge of my first print...  Need I say more?

So, I wasted over 100 sheets of paper, well over 2 hours of time cutting them all out and organizing them.  I was so frustrated I didn't even try to do any more.  I'll start over again later this week after I fix Betsy and reprint my templates (which I will be doing ONE block at a time from now on!)

On another note I found someone collecting quilts and stuff for Joplin.  There is a button over to the right, click on it and it will take you to Stitchin' Heaven Howdy's blog entry with addresses, etc.  Apparently there is a huge need right now for anything Baby related.  I am going to send some bottles, binkies, etc later today.  If you can and want to, please help --->>

Until Next Time,
Paul