Counting Lessons

I know I’m math challenged but I thought I could do basic counting. Apparently not. 

Before I started, I imported the bricks quilt design, colored it in and counted the various blocks. Easy peasy, right?

Yeah, not so much. The circles are all the blocks I was missing,

and these are the wrong-color extras. It’s not even the same number of blocks!

Fixed it.

Other lessons this quilt has taught me: when in doubt, make the blocks bigger and trim them to size. So much less stressful than ripping and swearing. 

If your seams start to ruffle (thread pulls too tight), it could be a mis-wound bobbin. Figured this out after 2+ hours spent thoroughly cleaning and rethreading two sewing machines, only to have the problem continue. The common denominator? Besides idiot operator error? I used the same bobbin in both. Replaced it, problem solved. Glad I figured it out before taking the machines in for $$$ servicing.

Most helpful lesson? When your blocks have a different # of seams along the sewing edge, put the block with the most seams on the bottom, against the feed dogs. I started doing this and my blocks went from wonky to perfectly lined up every time. Maybe I had a couple extra thread’s widths due to the two seams? Or the seams pulled a tiny bit apart when they fed through on the top? Don’t know why, but it works. 

 All that remains of my background fabric. 

And my favorite? Playing fabric chicken is every bit as satisfying as yarn chicken.