I have enjoyed working on Threads of Memory and have received so many great comments on my blocks. Thx to all who have commented and to Barbara Brackman who put this Block on her Blog.
I had some problems with the Oberlin Star block 7 for August. Templates were provided with the block and I made sure that Template A marked 4″ was accurate and printed away. What I did NOT do was check was templates B and F (I assumed they were accurate because it did not indicate to check that one) (Duh). So I made the block and decided to applique the corners rather than mess with the curve. This was the good thing to do – following the Templates was the wrong technique to follow! Here is what happened on that first try!
The block should depict the illusion that the star is on sitting on the top of a completed layer of fabric….. Notice the little piece of light fabric that is not centered – it is too small.
So I grabbed a ruler and tried to figure out why the center sections were too large! Well, the long side of the template was 4 1/8″ not 4″. This is a picture of how the 2 templates looked from the back – WRONG – Notice the dark blue and small white portion….. It did not work!
I decided I would have to go back to the drawing board and decided to apply some math to figure out how to cut the pieces with rotary cutting. I used Templates A and C to make the corner squares (I hand appliqued the circle onto a square).
For D I cut 4 each 5 1/4″ squares and sub cut into 8 triangles for the Star Points and Center Triangles. The cutting for E was accurate at 4 1/2″ square for the Center Square. For F – I cut a 3 1/4″ square and sub cut it into 4 triangles. To make the “wonky” Triangle NOT using the templates, I measured 1 3/4″ from the bottom of each triangle cut from the 3 1/2″ square and used the 4 small triangles from the 3 1/4″ square that was sub cut into 4 small triangles for the top. CLEAR AS MUD – right? Well, here is how it came out – absolutely perfect. The only difference in the way I made the block is that my “wonky” little piece of F and B are a little larger than the template.
Notice that the block now looks as it should. It was time-consuming to have to take the time figure out a way to achieve an accurate block, but it was fun to do and a great challenge to do the math and finish with an accurate block!
Lesson learned on this one – CHECK ALL TEMPLATES BEFORE CUTTING!
Have a great day. I am hoping for rain here in our are someday – and a cold wet winter – would not bother me a bit!
Chopin - A Passionate Quilter From Texas 