I decided to do some quilt blocks for an online charity collecting them to make quilts for the homeless. Any type block allowed as long as it was a particular size but there were some sample patterns provided that would give the required size block. I wanted to use one of these patterns because I figured it would give me an opportunity to piece something new and get some learning time in without doing an entire quilt. So after gardening in the morning I went to my craft studio and started in, excited to get some quilting time. Each block was made of four smaller blocks, so I cut and sewed the strippy portions and was quite pleased with those having never done anything strippy. Then I cut and sewed the four-patch sections and was ready to assemble the blocks. That’s when I discovered the error in the pattern. I was supposed to end up with 5.5″ squares but mine were 4.5″. I sat there with my blocks, ruler and pattern and went over and over it and there was no other conclusion: I’d followed the pattern exactly and it was wrong. I’m sure an experienced quilter would have looked at the directions before cutting and said to herself, “Oh, no. You can’t possible sew together four 2.5″ squares and end up with a 5.5″ square with 1/4″ seam allowances!” Alas, I never even thought to figure like that. So what to do? I wondered what my quilting mentor, Kae, would do and knew she wouldn’t throw them out and start over, she would adapt. So I put some sashing on those four-patches and made them 5.5″.
It took a while and after four of the corrected four-patches were sewed to four of the strippy blocks to make two completed blocks, I decided to forget the other four four-patches and just make the alternate small blocks for some additional practice using another technique. I was almost done cutting out the pieces when Scott came down to talk to me. I told him my sad story and asked him to check my math and make sure I was cutting the correct number of pieces so I didn’t have another disaster and waste more fabric. He said I was correct and then the engineer said we should check the dimensions of the pieces in case there was an error in the pattern again. We did and found there was no way those five pieces were going to make a 5.5″ block with seam allowances. Without seam allowances, yes, but not with. What the?!?!?!? I sat there stunned. After some time trying to figure out how to salvage things, I made up mind. No more time being frustrated when this was supposed to be fun! I sewed the four remaining strippy blocks together (which turned out quite cute), and am sending three completed blocks to charity.
Lessons learned:
- check over patterns carefully, especially free ones from the internet, BEFORE doing any cutting
- use those rusty math skills from high school to do some basic figuring (Alison & Holly will be proud)
- strippy blocks are cute and fun and I can do them
- I sewed my blocks very straight; must read up on pressing techniques
- “When faced with desperate circumstances, we must adapt”, by 7 of 9 on Star Trek: Voyager
