Applique Tuesday

Have you been to San Francisco?

WIPs Be Gone Week 24

I'm working on 6 1/2" blocks for two sides of the VA quilt:

And here's that baby quilt all finished:

And that's about it for this week as I've been getting ready for my TX cousins' visit. They arrive tomorrow AM.  Then we head for San Francisco on Monday. We'll fly back later in the week and they leave the 21st.  So I'll probably be incommunicado for much of that time.  But do leave a link or comment or both of your progress. I may just connect with the blog at some place up there and would love to see what you're up to.  Linky below:

An InLinkz Link-up

I'm linking to Sarah's Can I get a Whoop, Whoop?, Richards Link a Finish, and  Lizzie's Free Motion Mavericks. What beautiful quilts will they be showing us?

Applique Tuesday Week 24

or The Madness of Deconstruction - that's what today was. I was working on a VA quilt. I'd made this block. It was easy, came out great. Started on the second one. What a mess cutting one piece wrong can make.

As you can see the corner square was 1/2" too small. It should have been 6 1/2" square. It was 6 by 6 1/2.  So I added fabric to the short side and resewed the corners. Sewd the two squares together and realized that in making the units with the wrong squares I misaligned the points - hence the big space between the star points. Ugh! 

So I took off each unit and was going to fix the points,  but I only had enough to fix the one side of two - no more of that fabric available.  Did that and then realized it didn't help on one side because the points didn't come close to alignment. They were off by 3/4" horizontally!  It looked like I just starting piecing. Turned out the setting triangle was too big. So ripped out that unit again. Took apart the seams around one side of the large triangle. I then basted it with the unit by setting the seam allowance of the star unit 1/4"lower to the edge of the triangle. When I checked,  that seemed to work. So took out the basting, cut off 1/4" from the one side of the triangle and resewed the seam.

Looks much better although the colors are wrong in this photo.  The top colors are correct in the middle photo.  Those two unfixed bottom corners won't be so bad as they don't get connected to another block - they'll just look a little wonky. What a way to spend the day!

In the middle of this chaos, I dropped everything and sat down and did a little hand stitching to save my sanity. My elephants now have eyes - my applique for this day.

What are you up to?  Leave me a comment and I'll come by and see your goodness - quilty or not.

Blessings