Thanksgiving Blessings and a Block

Well, it came out on my first try.  LOL

I've been dreading this one because I hadn't had time to sit down and properly read the instructions and all that kept floating in my head was the combination of paper piecing and "hand" piecing.

I spent last weekend at my mom's helping her through her sleepy weekend after chemo.  I had packed up all my sewing stuff since I had two days where she would be napping.

I started working on a new project and read thoroughly through the instructions for Madeline's block.

Today was the first day I've had to sew a test block.

I traced the templates with tracing paper and worked off those.  It came out to the 9" unfinished block.  Thinking maybe my 1/4" seam is stingy?

Hope you like it ma mie!

Happy Thanksgiving to all celebrating tomorrow and may we all have attitudes of gratitude throughout the year!

God bless!

Pratice Block for Madeline

I thought I'd share with you my practice block for "Dove in the Window"

After reading that there were problems with the paper piecing templates on quilterscache, I decided to print them out and take a look.  Math isn't my strong point, but I realized straight away that the templates were too small.  If you think of this block as a basic 9-patch to finish to 9", each "patch" should be 3" without seam allowances and 3.5" with seam allowances.

Since this appears to be a fairly simple block, I decided to draw the block on graph paper and piece in the conventional way. 

I used my triangle tool to cut the points ... and the block came together fairly quickly.

I'm assuming this is a 9" block, and the unfinished dimensions should be 9.5".  Madeline, if this is incorrect, please let me know!

Claudia

A fix for Madeline's block (I hope!)

Madeline would like an 8.5" unfinished block, and the pattern hasn't been cooperating all that well.

If you measure the length of one of the strips in Template A, you will find the block width, both finished and unfinished.
http://www.quilterscache.com/images64/doveatthewindowtempA.gif

If your template is not measuring 8.5" unfinished, you might want to try what I did. I eventually found that if I printed at 93% of the actual size (control P, look under preferences, then efffects) I'd have an 8.5" unfinished block. My grade-school ruler tells me that this block has a "1-inch test square" that measures 29/32 of an inch, which sort of looks like a smidge over 7/8".

You can play with your printer's settings to see what percentage you need to arrive at 8.5" across. Then use the same setting to print Template B. http://www.quilterscache.com/images64/doveatthewindowtempB.gif

One word of caution: by shrinking the templates we will be leaving Madeline with seam allowances between 3/8" and 1/4". If you normally use a generous seam allowance you may need to print Template B a little larger (moving up to 94% might be enough). Please consider making a trial block, or at least a trial centre section.

I'll report back in a day or two once, I've finished mine.

Good luck!

Crazy Patterns

Hello ladies.

Suzanna sent me an e-mail that the template that I printed from Quilter's Cache site and sent to you is off.

She said they are a bit smaller than expected.  I asked for a 9" block, and Suzanna says the individual squares should measure 3.5" but they are not quite 3.25".  If you use the templates the block will be  about 8" finished and 8.5" unfinished instead of the 9" I'd originally asked for.

I'd like the 9" block.  Please don't stress---this is supposed to be fun!  and I'll make it work.

~Madeline