Measure Once, Cut Twice

Good morning, my friends. The days seem to be flying by right now. It's harder to get up in the morning with cooler temperatures and later sunrises. I've been sleeping a little later, and it cuts into the time I have for accomplishing anything during the day. It's probably all right to slow the pace a little bit as summer winds down.

It was late in the day by the time I made my way to the sewing room. My goal for the day was to do all the cutting for the Gumballs project. The "Gumballs," pattern is available right here. It can be done in pretty much any colorway. I happen to be doing mine in reds, pinks, and purples. Pattern pictures make it confusing to look at, but it's made up of just a single block turned different directions in the finished quilt. The blocks are easy enough to sew together, but there is a lot of cutting involved. When all my pieces were cut for the next row of five blocks, they looked like this:

The next task was to sew the 2-1/2 inch sections into four patches. Easy enough.

Here's where things went haywire. If you look at that first image, the sections in the upper left were cut to 4-1/2 inches square. They were to be made into half square triangles, and the proper size was 4-7/8 inch. Doh! Okay, well bummer. I've highlighted that section on the pattern now. Hopefully, I won't make that mistake again. And I can still use those pieces next time because there are also 3-1/2-inch sections. I'll cut them down when this project comes around again.

In the meantime, I cut 20 more blocks, this time 4-7/8 inches square.

Then, I turned them into half square triangles. I had about half of them trimmed...

When kitty helper extraordinaire arrived on the scene.

She was certain her expurrtise was required for the trimming.

Are you pawsitive you have that lined up propurrly?

Well, clearly, I was finished sewing for the day. It was late by then anyway. I had a new recipe going in the slow cooker. This is Thai Chicken Thighs. It was good, and pretty easy to make. We had some leftover broccoli in the fridge, and so I added that to the side, dousing it in the sauce from the chicken.

The recipe called for bone-in chicken thighs with the skin removed. That seemed silly to me. You're going to remove the bone when you eat it, right?  I used boneless, skinless chicken thighs. The one thing I'd say about that is that the bone might have helped hold the thighs together a little better. Mine wanted to fall apart when I tried to remove them from the slow cooker. Doesn't matter. I'd use boneless, skinless again. 

The sauce was an interesting combination of flavors, including salsa and creamy peanut butter along with some other stuff. I had a half-eaten jar of salsa in the fridge, and so it was a good way to use the rest of that. We had it over jasmine rice. It was easy enough to make in the RV, and that always makes me happy.

So today I'll get back to the Gumballs project. I should be able to finish the blocks today, and then I'll be moving on to the next project on my list of WIPs, which will be to make the next block for the Raggedy & Friends project. The embroidered sections are finished. These two:

They need surrounding with scrappy bits. And since my current slow-stitching piece won't take more than a couple of days to finish, it's probably a good time to trace the Autumn's Harvest Pumpkin piece and have it ready for its time with my needle.

When I came upstairs just now, I left Sadie resting up for another day of helping. A sewing cat's work is never done. Besides, it's important to get your beauty sleep.

Tomorrow I'm getting a DEXA scan, and so I'll take the day off from blogging. I have to be at the hospital by 11:15, and that will cut into my morning time. We'll chat again on Wednesday. Until then, remember these words:

Illegitimi non carborundum

Google it if you need to. There's plenty of that going around right now.