Hawt! 😈🐓🍆🐻

So, the pieces are being auditioned now for a place in the biscotti quilt. Note that not all the squares have been placed quite yet. But I sense more moving, swapping, and turning around to come until it feels right. And now that I see the emerging piece, a number of pieces will be moved around.

43 inch square log cabin reduced to a lot of 3 inch squares!

43 inch square log cabin reduced to a lot of 3 inch squares!

And a couple more pics of my 43 inch square log cabin reduced to a lot of 3 inch squares! Lol

43 inch square log cabin with finished 1.5 inch strips.

Using a cutting ruler to cut my new strips from my original log cabin piece.

Using a cutting ruler to cut my new strips from my original log cabin piece.

Strip cut into 3 inch squares.

Well, it’s now chopped up! And time to arrange them before sewing it all back together. I also tried using my new cutting ruler.

My brain understands that. But it’s been a hard quality to shake. I do feel I’ve gotten better, especially through sewing and quilting. My sense of what it means to learn has been challenged. Which is good. As an Education prof, its rather ironic to experience what I preach to my students!

Thank you, Lynda. This piece is a bit of a milestone for me. Lots of learning and new insights.

I also have one of those quilts in progress. It’s beyond recovery! It would have look nice if those darn half square triangles hadn’t messed everything up. Lol

For me, after decades of “learning” from books - I’m an academic - I wanted to engage myself differently. Embodied learning!

Log cabin quilt, 43 inch square piece. Colors go from light sandy brown out to dark slate.

I’m done. My last round was trickier b/c I had to extend my strips. Alas, I sewed one of the strips rightside to wrong side, so the join is visible. Arggg. NOT undoing that 43 inch long seam! No way!

Besides, now I’m going to cut this all up for stage 2. So the problem may not even be visible.

Yes. That is what I have read and watched on YouTube videos. Alas, my sewing line is often not so straight. Sigh! Lol

I also got one when I realized such a thing existed! I find it very helpful!

Yes, that place reveals a misaligned join between the two pieces.

Also, the pieces in the center are sewn with an exact quarter inch seam; as I moved out, I started to “play” with the seam width. Alas, my machine can’t move the needle, so I am left to guess where the fabric should be placed.

Aha! This makes sense. I haven’t been attentive enough to cutting my pieces as such. Sometimes I also stretched my fabric when starching and pressing my pieces. So I would just sew my strips within the piece of fabric. They were often close, but a little off. Thanks for the insight!

Ha! Do you have any advice for minimizing these annoying little trouble makers? Is it a fabric issue? Or is it simply unavoidable?

I feel like I’m getting better with time and appreciating things like accurate seams, pressing, and such. I’d like to know if quilters “fuss” about the back sides of their quilts, especially where there could be lots of frayed pieces.

Ha! I find that all my pieces end up smaller than I need them to be…and my points don’t line up.

I would gather that you don’t appear to have these sorts of issues?

And can I assume that a “scant” quarter will be somewhere between a sixteenth and an eighth of an inch smaller than a quarter inch?

I’m working on my scant quarter-inch seams, but I am still having slightly off seams, sometimes not straight. Couldn’t I just add that scant quarter-inch to my pieces and then sew using my quarter inch foot? Does this make sense so when the pieces are pressed I have a correct sized raw piece?

Well, here it is. My first Biscotti Quilt. Sewing all those block pieces together was a pain. Way too many seams to sew together and over. I almost thought I broke my machine! The back is a mess. The front has a few misaligned points. But I did it. Next time I’ll choose very different fabrics!

Two pieces. Decided to try different colors and slightly different arrangements. But I think the orange one is better. Not enough difference in the color values for the side yellow rectangles. Hmmmm. What shall I do….

I’ve seen some videos about strip rulers or slotted rulers. Is this something that many quilters have in their tool kit? Is it worth getting? TIA

I’m making a baby quilt for my niece. Probably not going to make it by Xmas. Oh, well. This block is supposed to be 20 x 20. Piecing together a 3 x 3 and quilt with different colors for the suns. More pics later, but here is a pic of the first block.

My stars! There are a lot of disappearing nine/four patch demonstration videos on my various social media streams!

Sheesh. I’m five short. …and that is a lot of excess fabric cut off. Such is the case of these square-in-square blocks, I guess.

Still, I’m about ready for the next step! Yippee!

Thank you so much! Just another 20 or so to go! FPP for the win!

Today, I’m going to rage against the (sewing) machine…with some more square-in-square blocks.

I have tried the FPP method and I am getting lovely square-in-squares! Yeah me! Most importantly, my center squares are truly square, which was my problem before. Thanks for the tip and encouragement!

Thanks. I think I am going to to try FPP. It seems like a little bit more work, but worth it.

I think I need a much lighter touch!

This is not something I have paid much attention to. I suspect this is just one of those I can start to pay attention to in my relatively short journey - 9 months learning about quilting.

There are many things that could be going on, so it would seem. I think I felt that starching would help more than it does. I also have a new machine and I find the pedal very touchy!