Catching Up

A very satisfying day.  I finished two of the weekly blocks for the Traditional Tuesday Sampler.

The only trouble I had was trying to follow Jenifer's suggestion about ironing the seams flat to reduce bulk.  After burning the ends of my fingers repeatedly, I gave up and ironed the seams to the side the way I usually do.  Then I pressed the heck out of the blocks (with steam) to flatten the bulky areas as flat as I could.  I can only assume that Jenifer has lovely slender fingers, not the pudgy square ended ones I have.

Proceeded to block # 2 for the Bloggers' Block of the Month .  Pulled out the 2.5" strip bin and got to work selecting fabrics.  I'm using my blue and neutral scraps for the 8.5" blocks.  I see from surfing blogs that many participants are making two of each block.  And I thought, Well duh! Why didn't I do that?!  I don't know why that didn't occur to me, since that's exactly what I'm doing for the blocks of the week samplers Modern Monday and Traditional Tuesday.  I may pull out the bin sometime between now and next month's block and make an extra for each of the first two published blocks.

I used my Easy Angle ruler to cut the components for the Half-square triangles.  It lets me cut the components from the 2.5" scraps and still end up with a 2.5" HST.  I just love this ruler.

My Bloggers' Block of the Month # 2.

I pulled out enough bright scrappy strips to make another dozen 9-patches for my Sister's Choice project, cutting two 10.5" lengths of contrasting colours and one 2.5" square of one of the fabrics for each block, and then cutting up the remainder of each half strip into 2.5" x 4.5" bricks or 2.5" squares.  I've built up quite a nice little stack of bricks and squares this way.  I don't know yet what I'm going to do with them...  When I first started quilting it was a major puzzle to me how the more experienced quilters were so prolific.  Now I know.  You do this long enough and you end up with far more components than you can use and it becomes necessary to find projects to use them up.  A dozen scrappy patches is about my limit time wise.

The resulting 9 patches are really bright and cheery.  The 9 patch count is now up to 31.  I will want 48 to make a big lap size, 56 to make a double-bed size quilt, or 80 to make a queen size.  Still haven't decided which size I want to make and I need to check what size bed the intended recipient has.  This is another one that is going to require strips with sew-n-flip corners.

It feels good to be up to date on the blocks of the week/month.  I hate falling behind on those.