Friendship Circle block

Hi dear Readers,

Welcome back, I'm glad you're here again!

This time I'm presenting my newest Craftsy BOM creation, the Friendship Circle block.

I had a few glitches with this block in the making and was kind of grumpy last night. So the pattern that you're supposed to print out from the website (course materials) is sized wrong. Instead of 12.5 inches the block I made yesterday measures 13 inches. I was so proud when I assembled it and all the points came together as they're supposed to. After oooohing and aaaaahing over it I measured it and it was a 1/2 inch too big. I went to the talk section on  the Craftsy website just to find out that yes, the block was put on the site in the wrong size (even though the test square measured exactly 1 inch when I printed the pattern) and you're supposed to shrink it down to 96%. That  broke my heart right  there. After a little debate on Twitter I figured I'll selvage the block I can't use and will make a pillow case out of it that goes with one of the quilts. Did I mention I'm planning to make 2 quilts out of the 20 blocks? Yes. I think it would be a huge quilt for a baby so I decided to divide the blocks and make 10 blocks in each quilt and that's plenty for a baby.

So after the big  disappointment  yesterday I printed out  the pattern and reduced it down to 96% on the copy machine. I also had cut out the fabric patches that were needed for making the new block. Needless to say I messed up the cutting again and cut the white background fabric patches flipped. I tried to make it work when I was sewing everything together this afternoon, but it didn't work so I decided to use the wrong side of the fabric. And so I did. It's not noticeable at all so I'm not going to sweat over it.

I still have some new things I learned from this block:

• before you start making a paper pieced pattern make sure you measure the print to be the right size
• glue in the seam allowance only, otherwise the glue will turn yellow when you press the piece (ask me how I know! :)
• I really like the new method I was using by trimming the already sewn fabric to include a 1/4 inch seam allowance into which I'll pin the next fabric (is that clear enough to  understand? I need English lessons. Badly!)
• when your iron starts to beep because you think it overheated for being  on stand-by too long, just turn it off and give it some time. It'll work again. At least mine did :)
• when your sewing machine starts skipping stitches on the very last seam you're sewing un-thread the machine and re-thread it again, it solved my problem
• helper cats will help no matter what!

Here he is helping to hold the pin cushion:

Helping to paper piece:

The #quiltphoto theme of the day is: Blue. Here's my picture:

That's all for now, I'm gonna have to think what to work on next, might just assemble the 2 quilts and finish them, I haven't decided yet. Note to self: still have to take photos for the 4th quarter FAL.

Thanks for stopping by!

'Til we blog again! :)