I'm having a great time using my American Jane collections and the boxer shorts. So what is wrong with these blocks? They are ALL 1/2 inch too small!! Arggghhh!!!! I love this one called Honeycomb -
the bee fabric from the American Jane collection, Le Petit Poulet, was a perfect choice. And I got to use some of my boxer shorts fabrics in this block called Birds in the Air.
Those little HST finished at an inch! But the overall block is 1/2" too small. How did this happen? Well I think I have figured it out. I printed out the templates from the CD and I assumed (oh yeah, that's exactly where I went wrong) they printed out the correct size. I was in such a hurry to start sewing them up I assumed that the blocks were suppose to be 6" unfinished, not finished since that is the size my first block turned out to be. And since they gave templates and not measurements I assumed it was because the blocks couldn't be rotary cut. WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! A lot of these blocks can be rotary cut and why the author/editor/publisher didn't include this information I do not know.
So I did some searching online and found this discussion board, and if you scroll down a little ways you will find that a wonderful quilter by the name of lizquiltz figured out how to get multiple templates on one piece of paper (another shortcoming - why only one template per page in the book?) and she tells you that Template one is a 2 1/2" cut/2" finished square - marvelous! Now after I downloaded it and printed out the first sheet I realized that again my templates were a bit small so I had to go into the Page Setup menu, make my margins smaller and make sure that is was not "shrinking to fit" the page. As I remember it said something about "no scaling" - sorry I'm not very tech smart. Anyway I then printed out all the templates, which is 15 sheets, on cardstock which will make nice templates for the odd shaped pieces but there are plenty I can rotary cut.
So what to do with the dozen blocks I've already stitched? I think I'll make a little wall hanging out of them and I'm going to restart my FW blocks. Oh I should have known that it was too good to be true for me to be up to date on a QAL. I always get distracted by other shiny quilt patterns and veer off in another direction and then eventually circle back around. At least the FW QAL is flexible - they try to do 2 blocks a week but you can work at your own pace. Sooooo..... I'm going to redo these little cuties and move on. No use crying over fabric that has already been cut. This is a scrappy quilt and it will be fine.
Hope that someone else may benefit from my error - my enthusiasm gets me in trouble from time to time but it isn't going to change me.
Happy stitching-
carol fun
You just made lemonade.....
ReplyDeleteBummer!! But a wall hanging would be so cute!! Good luck on the restart!
ReplyDeleteOh no - don't get rid of those blocks. Put a tiny sashing around them that matches the sashing you're going to use and no one will be the wiser and disperse them throughout the quilt. If not, just put them together and make a table topper. I'm loving your fabrics so much. I'm doing mine out of repros, but I would love something brighter. Maybe next time...oh, what am I saying! LOL I don't know if I'll make another one. I only have three more blocks to complete.
ReplyDeleteYour blocks look amazing though!
ReplyDeleteLove the bee block...do that one again the same way...and the birds...perfect! Love the templates all together...what an awesome idea!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Deb above. Just put a small border around them that makes it looks like you did it on purpose and then scatter them throughout the quilt. I'm going to have to do this with my Civil War blocks of the week from Barabara Brackman's Civil War blog. Many of my blocks are turning out NOT to be the exact 9 1/2 inch size that is required. You could even really make this intricate project even more time intensive by embroidering around the little border. (Just kidding!)
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