Sampler – week 5 and 6

Now, if you read my blog regularly, you would have noticed that I didn’t blog last week about the sampler quilt-along. I had done my blocks in time, using my brand new sewing machine to make them: they were finished on Saturday. Weekends are bad blog-wise, because I can’t really upload pictures. Well, I can, but that means negociating with my husband who loves to play computer games: if I upload pictures while he is playing, then his game becomes unplayable. I’m a good wife and I love my husband dearly, so I let him have the whole t’internet for the weekend (and also, I often can’t be bothered doing bloggy stuff on the weekend – I don’t know why).

Back to the matter at hands. I will spare you the pictures of the fabrics being cut as I forgot to take some for this week’s blocks!

Blocks for week 5

It was good that my sewing machine arrived 2 days after those blocks were posted on Amy’s blog and before I had started working on it. When I saw the first one, I dreaded sewing it all by hands!
I replaced the solid by those little rose buds – I was going to use the dots, but I’m starting to run low and I thought it would be nice to use those roses where I would use the dots before, as we were halfway through the whole quilt along. I liked this block quite a lot (even if it’s not perfect!) and I’m thinking about making a whole quilt with just this block. I’ve got the fabrics and all and I’m hoping to start working on it when this quilt is finished!
For the second block, I was faced with a dilemma: follow the instructions to the letter and not respect the directionality of my orange fabric or adapt the instructions to my fabric. The eagle eyes will notice that I adapted the block to my fabric – I just couldn’t live with the fabric being in the wrong direction (call me mad, I don’t care!)

Week 6 was a big challenge for me, as we entered the territory of odd sized blocks. 2 7/8 inches? Erm? What?!
Blocks for week 6

But let’s start with the “easy” one, the one with the owls in the centre. This one taught me that I REALLY need to work on my seam allowances. Or get a 1/4 inch foot for my machine. Or both. Probably both. I ripped the seams for the stripey blocks a good number of times. I stopped before I started to pull my hair out – Not perfect, but good enough to live with it. Once this hurdle was passed, it was pretty straightforward to put together.
Now, the second block. The one with the weird numbers. 2 7/8 inches squares? 5 5/8 inches square? My mind went into freeze for a little while. I’ve only been using imperial measures for a couple of years and some things just don’t compute for me. So, what happened? I cut half of my pieces wrong! I realised I was wrong just before I cut the big 5 5/8 square. By then, I had 4 of 2 3/4 inches squares and a bunch of 2 3/4 inches strips. Yup. 1/8 too narrow. Much cursing was used. I also ran out of the fabrics I had. Even more swearing. I took a break and came back to it a little later. I had ordered some fabrics in the meantime, but this block could still be salvaged with what I had right at this moment. I just grabbed my stripey fabrics and cut 2 strips from it and I managed to get 2 more strips from the remainder of the green flowery fabric.
Honestly, it turned out MUCH better than anticipated – like eleventy billion times better. It’s even almost lining up. Will I make this block again? Not anytime soon! But I’m glad I did it (and now I’ve got plenty of little bits of 2 3/4 inches of fabrics – thinking about cutting them to 2 1/2 and making little patches block, would be nice for a matching pillow or something?)

Only 4 blocks to go! It’s already quite big!
All my blocks!

I’m loving it – so fresh and happy! I can’t wait to see it finished!