Friday, August 23rd

DUH  Moment Ahead!!

You know how you know something but yet forget about it nonetheless?  Yep – happened to me just this morning.  A few weeks back, while cleaning out the sewing area, I ran across an unopened package of rotary cutter blades.  It got me thinking about my cutters, trying to remember when I had last changed the blades.  Given the package hadn’t been opened it was a more than fair bet, I hadn’t EVER changed the blades.  Really??!!  That’s just crazy.  I mean I am forever changing the needles in my sewing machine, fishing lint out of its nooks and crannies, cleaning scissor blades, sharpening pencil points, etc.  And the rotary blades hadn’t been changed since I bought them. WOW.  So I changed them out, carefully discarding the old nasty blades. And promptly forgot about them.

 Until this morning, that is.  Yes, I had been wondering why I had been struggling to cut fabric but I thought my mats were just getting too old and grooved up. NOPE!!  It was the tired old dull blades.  So when I started cutting the  strips for the ‘as of yet unnamed quilt made from Siren Song collection’ (going to have to come up with a simpler working title), I darn near sliced my way to the far reaches of the sewing table with a tiny fraction of effort.  Which means I have to relearn cutter control and speed and fast.  As it was, I miss cut a few of the strips as the new sharp blade seemed to have a mind of its own and wandered off course, away from the ruler, dang it! Note to Self – Write down the date of blade changes!!

And then there’s Math.

I love math.  I sat down to recalculate the block size and layout for the ‘as of yet unnamed quilt made from Siren Song collection’.  Hang on – digression from Math for a minute – let’s get a working title.  ‘Summer Stripes’. That will work for now.

Okay back to Math.  The stripe fabric has a half yard repeat and I have 5/8 yard pieces (more is on the way).  Cutting 9 ½ inch blocks yielded 4 blocks per cut strip, which works well since you need 4 quarter square cut from the same side of the strip for the pattern to work.   I started my calculations thinking I could cut 6 ½ inch blocks and everything would be hunky-dory. NOPE.  The usable WOF is 42 inches, yielding 6 blocks per strip. Since 6 is not evenly divided by 4, the 6 ½ inch block wouldn’t work.  Of course, I didn’t realize this until I had cut into the Sunset color.  Like I said, more fabric is on the way and I ordered more than just the Twilight I didn’t have.  Sometimes it’s good to have a fabric obsession and it’s always good to triple check your math – just in case.

So now, most of the blocks are cut to 5x5 and are ready to be sub-cut in groups of 4 to be reassembled with the matching strip pieces.