Frustrations...and turning it around

Ever have one of 'those' days? You know, the days when nothing you do is right...when Mr. seam ripper is your best friend.

My dear husband made me a sign for 'those' days. I used to have it hanging over my sewing table, but it got packed away and I haven't unearthed it yet. I need to though, as it reminds me :

"BAD DAY? Go away, not here should you play!"

That's what the sign says. LOL. And it reminds me when I'm having one of 'those' days, the best thing to do is go and read, or blow up balloons for my 6yr old, or anything else but sew.

I was having one of 'those' days last week. And stupidly decided that this scrappy stars pattern that I found here: http://stashmanicure.blogspot.com/2010/08/scrappy-stars-tutorial.html would make the perfect pattern for one of our charity groups. Our Snug society group, where we make lap quilts for a Veteran's organization.

So, I got out some strips that I have and happily pulled all the red, white and blues out. Then I cut the strips 8" long and happily sewed them together......and this is where it went all wrong. Even though I had printed out the tutorial, I figured I didn't need to look at it, as I pretty much understood what I had to do...that was the first mistake. I clearly failed to read the part that said "Each rectangle (that you cut) will be 4"x 7 1/2"!

But I still hadn't realized this....I merrily sewed whites to blues, and two different reds together, then put three of the strips together so it went white/blue...red/red....white/blue I wanted to make sure that the whites where in the 'corners' so that they would make a white star.

Luckily I only sewed about 15 strips together, before I had to lay 4 of them together in a square to see the star......and that's when I realized the mistake I made! My strips were 2" wide...and I cut them 8" long. So that when the three strip pieces were together, they made a 4.5"x11" rectangle....and you can't put those dimension rectangles together in the proper way to make this work! Your 3 strip block has to be a square, so that you can turn every other one horizontal.

That's when I knew it was time to pull out my sign....

Fast forward to today. I decided that I would cut the length of the strips that I already had pieced together down to match the width. So that I now have 4.5' squares, and when you put 4 of those together, you come up with a star....

Can you see the star?

So now, I have strips that are 3" wide and some that are 3.5" or 4" wide. What I plan to do is make different sized scrappy stars, and still put them together into a lap sized quilt. I think it will look great!

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Now that my Australian friend recieved her table runner I made, I thought I'd show it all to you.



So put a sign on your wall, and when you're having one of 'those' days....go do something else instead of sewing.

Have a great day.

Dorian