Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Good and Bad


I finished assembling the blocks for the Peppermint Candy (Red) quilt. Finally.

Then I tinkered, measured, and trimmed a couple of blocks, then sewed a sample pair together. This pair of blocks is WRONG. It's what happens when you keep working past your bedtime when you really should have gone to bed. You can count the squares to figure out why.

This pair is GOOD. (Again, I'll let you count the squares to figure out why.) **

So now I know what I am going for. The layout on the design wall can now be rearranged to evenly distribute the reds, and to avoid the dreaded BLOBs, or areas of "too much dark" or in this case, "too much busy" together. (A geeky aside: a BLOB is a real term in computing, specifically in database management. It means "Binary Large Object.")

Once I get the layout nailed down, (I need two more rows to the design in Saturday's post to get the size I want for my dining room table), I will start taking the blocks off the wall, trimming them to size and sewing them together.

To Nancy, who wondered if I could fix the first pair: Yes, of course, but I have to unsew the two long rectangular blocks from each other, then trim to size, first. Which I will likely do later.
 


** OK, I'll tell you. A pair of blocks when sewn together should be a square, that is, with the same dimension on each side. The original block is what I call a "long rectangle." For the rest of the discussion on this blog, a pair of long rectangles sewn together will equal one block. For them to be sewn together properly (every other block rotated 90 degrees), the block needs to be square.

PS: Check out the SSOBB barn exhibit from AQS Chattanooga at the Build a Barn blog, and at Teresa's blog.

2 comments:

Nancy J said...

Square is good, and half an inch too long, can you chop it off to the right length, or start all over again? Love those reds together.

Pat said...

Yes, trying to squeeze more out of a day can backfire. Great blocks, though.