A Good Day Goes Bad

Good morning, my friends. Don't let that title fool you. It's all good. I'll tell you what I meant by that in a minute. First off...it's wet outside. The promised rain has returned. It's supposed to be a wet weekend, but sunny by Monday. That's weather I can live with, but I expect it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. We haven't even reached winter yet, my friends, although it might feel as if it's here to many of you.

So when we left off yesterday, I'd just returned home from having breakfast with Sue. While I was out, I ran a couple of errands. When I arrived home, I had some lunch and a nap, and then I went to work taking the first stitches for the Joy in the Ordinary block. This is the last one for this small quilt.

It should be easy enough to finish it this morning. It'll still need borders when the stitching is finished.

From there, I headed downstairs to continue working on the Blue Blazes mini. The book calls this quilt "Fractured." We're so often on hiking trails where the trees carry blue blazes, 

I decided to give it a different name.

Sadie thought she might help out until she saw what we were working on. With no thumbs, it's hard for kitties to help out when working with such small pieces.

Oh, would you look at the time! I just remembered I have an impurrtant appointment with my treat dish upstairs. TTFN!

And that was the last I saw of her. 

Now, I'm no expert when it comes to making minis. For that, you'd need to visit Sheryl at Temecula Quilt Co. I was lucky to visit her shop some years back, and I was astonished at the workmanship in her mini quilts. Here's an example:

You can read my post about her shop right here. Sadly, her shop has closed, but she still has a web presence right here. I quizzed her about how she manages such incredible accuracy on these tiny pieces. She answered "no" to every question I asked, and so my ideas about how this could be accomplished were all wrong. I have learned a few things along the way as I've made other minis, however. And don't ask me the why or how of any of this...I just know it helps.

First, a wool pressing mat and a tailor's clapper will help get nice sharp and flat seams. There's some information and a demonstration of how a clapper works right here. I got both the pressing mat and the clapper on Amazon.

The little pincushion you see there was one I made in a felting class some years back. The base was supplied to us, but we felted the little lamb over the top. The pincushion is beside the point...or maybe I should say it's the resting place for points. The point is that these Clover fork pins are a must for accurate piecing.

They allow you to pin on both sides of a seam so that it doesn't go wonky as it runs under the presser foot. (I thank my dear friend Sharon V. for cluing me in on the fork pins.) I had them in a box, but they tangled like metal coat hangers. Thus, the new home on my pincushion. I was happy to give the little pincushion a job. I only use these when I'm making mini quilts.

Finally, I really like this Itty-Bitty Eights Rectangle ruler from Primitive Gatherings.

These come in different sizes. Mine is the 3 x 6-inch size, and it's great for mini quilt pieces. Of course, most rulers have 8th-inch markings. I like that these go the full length of the ruler. Also, as I'm cutting, I'm lining up the horizontal line with the seam to be sure I'm cutting straight. I'd sewn all the strip sets together to be cross-cut into sections. These first ones were cut to 7/8 of an inch.

I needed 36 sets from each of four different strip sets.

The next one was cross-cut to a full and merciful one inch.

They kept getting wider and wider until I had all four sets cross-cut into 36 sections each.

As a reminder, this is the quilt I'm making. There are nine blocks in all, and each block is made up of four identical pieced sections. As it turns out, it's less complicated than it looks.

So I started lining up the sections to be sewn into a quarter of a block when...and here's where a good day went bad...

Do you see the problem? The one on the right is too short. I'll admit, I said a bad word here of the F-word variety. I cut that tan background strip 1/4-inch too narrow. And, I don't know how I managed that. I'm going to make the excuse that it was the last thing I did that day (two days ago). Thankfully, it's the easiest one to fix, and so I cut the strips I'll need, and I'll try again today. I feel 99.999999999999999999999% certain that I have it right this time.

Getting back to where I discovered my error shouldn't take more than about 15 minutes today, and then I can start sewing the blocks together. 

Okay, so it's going to be a mostly sewing day. I want to get in a Bowflex workout, and then I'll catch up on the two minor housekeeping chores I've put off for the past two days. Aside from that, it will be all sewing all the time. I'm hoping I'll have a finished mini quilt top by day's end.