Old 03-04-2010, 08:12 PM
  #1  
mpeters1200
Super Member
 
mpeters1200's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Omaha, NE
Posts: 1,618
Default

I am a quilter who hates math...well I don't hate math, I'm just really bad at it. Repeatedly I add or subtract yardage wrong, I don't measure correctly...it took geometry to get me to understand algebra and it took quilting to teach me basic math skills

That being said, I am super duper proud of myself. I made a Road to OK block for one of my projects. Got the pattern straight from quilterscache where I get a lot of my blocks for samplers. I made it and I couldn't figure out why it looked so wonky. Angles weren't right, the block looked like a flower and I didn't remember picking any blocks that looked like awareness ribbons or flowers...I couldn't figure it out!

Took it to club the other night and someone nicely pointed out the bottom of my block was backwards and my trapezoid pieces were too big. I used a template, so I couldn't figure out why they were too big. I figured, sewing a bias edge of a triangle to a bias edge of a trapezoid, something stretched somewhere.

If there's anything I've learned from this board and the cache blocks is that many times you can make a block by using squares and rectangles and sewing them together before cutting on the bias. I've never been able to figure out the math to get the right size squares to end up being the right size triangles....until now.

Sat down tonight and did a lot of math and changed the trapezoids to rectangles and the triangles to squares and remade my block. I have never been so proud of my math in my life. If my old math teacher could only see....

Here is my old block:

[IMG]http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1267761870.jpg[/IMG]



And here is the right one. And I only had to measure and stitch it together one time. I seam ripped the other one to death. I dont' think it could have taken another rip out:

[IMG]http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z...1267757686.jpg[/IMG]

Yahoo! :thumbup:
mpeters1200 is offline