Friday, January 8, 2010

Curses, foiled again!

Well, here is my practice block for Jessica.
practice block complete
Thing is, when she says 9" block over at Quilters Cache, she means it.  It's 9" unfinished, and not, as I supposed, 9 1/2".  Choices time.  Do I sash it?  Or go back to the drawing board, looking for another block choice?  Jessica?  What would you prefer?

8 comments:

  1. in a fit of desperation and frustration, I mentioned taking a baseball bat over to the site...thought better of it and sashed my block! lol

    again, kudos to you on such a stunning finish!

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  2. Lesly, this is a cool block and I like your fabris.

    I looked at the pattern and it looks like it should come out ... the finished paper pieced squares should finish to 4" with an extra 1/4 seam allowance on the outside, right? - the inner brown strip would finish to 1". So (2)4 1/4 squares + 1" strip = 9.5"?

    Not sure about this but you might want to cut out the templates and make a paper mock-up first.

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  3. Actually the paper pieced squares *before* they are sewn to the 1.5" strips should measure 4.5".

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  4. Ugh. It must be my printers. I've tried both of them and they only print the block out to 3 7/8" (plus seam allowance) instead of 4".

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  5. Looks like the simplest solution is to increase the size of both centre strips by about 3/8". I think that will do the trick and not make it look too off-kilter.

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  6. When I did the Heavens ABlaze quiterscache block, the paper foundation pattern had a sizing guide test square in/on it. The square said it was supposed to measure 1". Using an omnigrid ruler, I found the printed square was a shade smaller than 1" so I enlarged it by different percentages to see what was the right fit, and found that printing the foundation sheets at 103% was perfect.

    I haven't check to see if the size guide is on any of the other quilterscache patterns.

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  7. Yeah, the sizing gave me fits, too but I like your block. It reminds me of a Celtic cross.

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  8. i also had lots of frustration with the sizing, so i'm just not doing a block from quilter's cache. two failed test blocks was enough for me.

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