Seams to be Working

Yesterday afternoon, I started sewing together the remaining 76 flying geese into four borders of 19 geese each. I was chain piecing all four borders to make the job go faster. First, however, I needed to tackle this problem of too-narrow seam allowances resulting in too-long strips of blocks because those multi-seamed borders are going to be attached to seamless sashings. There will be no forgiving spacers as there were with the previous Vintage Tin strips.

The first thing I noticed is that if I line up the edge of my fabric with the edge of my foot, there is about 1/16th of an inch difference between the foot measurement and the hash mark on the throat plate.

My previous strips were made up of no less than five friendship stars each, and so I'm estimating at at least 16 seams just for the friendship stars. Then there were more seams in the strip to boot. It's easy to see how my strips ended up a full two inches longer than they should have been.

With that in mind, I'm going to need to train myself to use the hash mark as a guide, rather than watching the quarter-inch foot.

Vicki W. made the excellent suggestion of measuring the sewn piece rather than measuring the seam allowance. As I sewed each successive goose to the four strips, I measured them to see how things were going. By watching the hash mark, my pieces were ending up pretty much spot on. The first group should have been 6 1/2 inches wide.

The next needed to be 9 1/2 inches wide.

And the next needed to be 12.5 inches wide.

And they continued to be pretty consistent. When I'd sewed six geese to each strip, I decided to break and make new strips. I'll sew them together when I've used up all the individual geese. It's just easier for me to work with them when they aren't too long and start twisting and tangling. And, honestly, what can you expect when you're trying to tame geese that want to fly around the room honking.

When I had two groups of four strips, each with six geese, I needed to stop for the day. I'll sew the next 28 into four strips of seven each, and then sew the lengths together. I'll still need to add a pieced crossroads block to the end of two of the strips, and then my borders will be finished. All I'll need then is for that sashing fabric to arrive. This morning I received a notification that it would be delivered tomorrow.

As I mentioned yesterday, we took our mechanically-ill-behaving boat out on the river yesterday, hoping it would run right. I'm happy to say that it did. The engine was "missing" when we first started. Our goal was to run it up and down the river at a relatively high speed. By the end of the evening, it was running like its old self. 

We found a shady spot in the river (because the sun was intense, even at the end of the day) and tied up to a snag.

Then we feasted on chilled cucumber-avocado soup, shrimp cocktail, olive bread, and a bottle of rose. Nice. (You can find links to the recipes in yesterday's post.)

Our boat has a little table we can set up for lunch and dinner cruises. We don't use it often, but it's nice to have it.

It started getting dark, and so we headed back to the launch ramp. The nearly-full moon was rising and the golden light of the afternoon made the river beautiful.

And that was our evening. Fun.

Today I'm getting my monthly pedicure and then I'm returning a birdbath like the one you see in the image below.

It was purchased just a couple of months ago. It is constructed of bamboo, and it isn't holding up at all. Where the wires attach, it has broken, and the underwater surface is beginning to bubble up. Obviously it isn't up to the job for which it is intended. I'm hoping they'll exchange it for something else. After that, I can get back to my sewing.