Monday, May 4, 2020

STACK & WHACK BLOCK HINTS...

This weekend was absolutely beautiful.  Sunny, warm (75) and light breeze!  Today...not so much.  Clouds have returned as has the cool temperatures (50's) and rain is in the forecast.  The yard was finally mowed...weeds and grass quite high...on Saturday and I think I sneezed about a thousand times, very hard sneezes that came in collections of five instead of my normal three!

I did some work on the yard this weekend but today...nope...too cold.  So I spent time on a ZOOM meeting and sewing my stack and whack blocks.  I did discover two things with these blocks. 

First of all, doing them in stacks of six is easier than stacks of eight.  The second cut (after I cut and sewed together the blocks from the first cut) is hard to make with eight blocks.  You have to hold both the ruler and fabric tightly so neither moves with cutting or it's hard to match the points.

The second thing that I found out was that using both washed and unwashed fabric in the same stack doesn't work well.  The points don't always meet. 

So on a lot of my blocks, the points don't match.  Most are off a wee bit, but some are off quite a bit.  Am I going to worry about that?  Nope.  Life's too short to be fussy about have exactly meeting points on all the intersections.

I have three more sets of six blocks ready to go. After that I will have enough to make a nice quilt.  I will be using a two inch sashing all around the blocks and then I think I will tie the blanket.  Unless I can finally figure out what is wrong with my singer machine...if I can, then I may machine quilt because there is far more room for quilting on that machine.

Here's a small group of six blocks...
Imagine each block with a two inch finished size sash around each block.  I am thinking of something dark and that reads solid.  I think it will look striking...what do you think?

Well, it's time to work on my mini-newsletter for the guild...I haven't done any work on it yet but at least I do have the topics that I am going to cover. 

Finally, if you want to hear something great, go to YouTube and search for 'Longest Time - Quarantine Edition Phoenix Chamber Choir'.  It's really neat, especially the person keeping time with a plastic bottle...you'll understand when you see it.

That's all for now...
Talk with you tomorrow...