Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]307318[/ATTACH]

In a classic case of “jeez, this worked better in my head,” I’m having a tad of trouble stitching the latest quilt together. It’s a spool block pattern with sashing. Now, in general I have trouble with the whole concept of which seams to sew in which order to make sure that everything nests together nicely. It takes a lot of thought and diagramming and writing things out in order to not get confused and wind up whimpering in a pile of blocks, seams going every which way.

But this pattern is so simple. I thought, well, I’ll just sew one border rectangle to each square to get a jump on the borders. If I hadn’t done that, I could be running merrily along sewing the blocks in rows and then adding rows of sashing, and everything would be nicely nesting and locking up and easy to press flat. But nooo. No, the trick is that the blocks are set turned every other one. So the presewn sashing doesn’t always match up neatly. And I started sewing the rows together without taking a hard look at it first, so the first few rows were a disaster. Now that I am committed, I’ve had to figure out how to put the sashing on so that only a few seam allowances have to be clipped.

So, not quite such a bad idea as when I got the spider out of my iron, but still not good. Next time I’ll take a little longer to figure out the seam order, no matter how confused it makes me. Then sewing the blocks together will be a lot more fun. What have other folks done recently that you’ve thought better of? Please share!

You were trying to sew the rows up and down... When doing an 'on point' quilt you still need to sew the rows as normal, just have different lengths to the rows and end with a triangle on each end. Stop and look at your picture and you will see the 'rows' you need to stitch, add triangles then the between the row sashing...

On the Orca quilt the blocks share a block. I merrily sewed a block to each side, like you thinking I was saving myself time. Well of course, I should have sewn the shared block only on one side, then joined them. Lots of unsewing. We all have "good ideas".

Love the spider in the iron story!!!!

Laughed so much at the bug in the iron link that my DH had me read it to him. We both had a chuckle.
Annie

like the spider and iron story!

Your spider in the iron story was priceless!

*grin* The dumbest moves always make the best stories! :o

I'm looking for just that spool block pattern. Where can I find a copy of it? I have an old soiled antique quilt that I just love that is made from that pattern. Would love to make one like it.
Brenda in Bama