Thursday, April 28, 2011

Penguin 9-Patch Chain continued...

I've been able to spend time sewing for three nights running now.

Tuesday I started constructing the chain blocks.  At the moment they remind me of bumblebees, I hoping that softens when the penguins are added.



Initially I questioned why we had to lay the two sets of corner blocks out differently, then once I sewed the first block realized that for the sake of symmetry in the corners - keeping the seam lines horizontal, this was important. On the other hand, it made joining the strips a little harder and pressing a little harder for me as it requires a little more finesse and coordination with the iron when initially setting the seams.
Wednesday I completed the blocks for the chain block and cut the solid blocks.


Then I started joining the strips for the Penguin 9 patch blocks.


Sadly, the black fabric is just about an inch too short to get 12 3.5 inch blocks from one strip - so I removed the black strip from the end piece and used the left over penguin pieces with blocks cut from a remaining half strip to piece together strips 12 & 13 for the blocks.


These will be fun blocks.  I'm not sure what I did wrong when I was working my way through the fabric needs - but clearly I screwed something up. I currently have 4 extra 1.5 inch black strips and 2 extra 3.5 inch penguin strips.  I'll use them when piecing the back, so they won't go to waste.  I also didn't cut enough 3.5 inch black strips the first time around - I think I must have put the 4 in the wrong column. Fortunately I have plenty of the black fabric on hand so I didn't have to make an emergency trip to the store to solve this problem.

Monkey helped in her usual style...


Which is an improvement from walking on the pressing board and knocking blocks off the bed when I was laying out the celestial circles quilt earlier this week. Dash is more content to sleep on my feet. If he had a tail, it would have been stepped on numerous times Wednesday night.

Gus and I are camping this weekend with the Cub Scouts, so I'm not sure I'll get the top assembled tonight as we have to pack.

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