Saturday, July 7, 2012

Math is stupid...or maybe I am

 This is block 241.  It is called Irish Chain.  This is one I'm going to make a whole quilt out of!  It is super easy and quick and I'm already planning on faster ways to put it together.  But, boy did I have some troubles with it the first go around.

You see the square in the middle?  I had no idea what size to make the square.  The book has blocks from 6 inches up to 14 inches and uses templates for that middle block.  Who has time or energy to dig in a drawer, find a ruler and measure a template?  Not me, that's for sure.  So, I'd rather, cut a square with my Go! fabric cutter, sew it together and see if it fits.  Well, the first square I tried was a finished 4 1/2 inch because that was what I had.  The outer corners are based on the 4 1/2 inch square so maybe?  Not even close.  The only other quarter square die cutter I have is the 6 inch.  Surely that was going to be way too big!  Nope, it was just a little bit too big.
You can see that I had to cut off the corners of the center square to get it to fit, but I don't have another die that works.  The center square is a 6 1/2 inch square.  And when I got the whole thing done, I realized I had made a very simple adding mistake.  2+2+5=9 right?  Well, I did 2+2+4 1/2 instead.  That middle rectangle was cut at 4 1/2 instead of 5 which makes the block just a little too small.  Can you guess what I'm going to be doing tomorrow?  I will be remaking this block, plus some more and playing with a layout.  I don't have EQ, so I have to do things the old fashioned way...sew, sew, sew and move the blocks around until I like what I see.  I'm using up some of my scraps in the process too.  But, the scrap bucket isn't getting any smaller!  What's up with that?

1 comment:

Jen said...

Well, whatever you did - it's beautiful! Keep up the good work!