Losing my religion with a double aster…

Observations of the day:

– How many Master’s degrees does it take to change a rotary cutter blade for the first time? Apparently 3 and a YouTube video. Don’t ask…

– Here are blocks 15 and 16 for Amy’s quilt:

This block is called “Cain and Abel” and I finished up to Poison’s “Nothin’ But a Good Time“.

– The next block is “Road to Lampass” and “Ain’t No Man” by the Avett Brothers was playing when this block was completed.

– Then I decided that I would try the “Double Aster” block. Here are Marsha Myrum’s beautiful blocks as posted on the NQC Quilt Block Challenge’s Face Book page. Looking at Marsha’s blocks, I knew I’d have to try it!

– As this is a pattern for a 12″ block (Marsha has kindly posted a 16″ version), I decided I’d make one, maybe two for my block exchanges.

– I first tried a purple/green colorway with a black background. I got everything cut and decided that my black fabric was being weird. I don’t know what’s going on with it bit it just doesn’t “feel” like my other fabric. It didn’t get crispy when I starched it, so I decided to put it aside until I can get additional black fabric. A trip to my LQS will be forthcoming later this afternoon – yay!

– So, I decided to try a blue colorway. Problem #1 – my iron decided to rebel by either spraying brown gunk on my white and light-colored fabric or by sticking to my fabric. Imagine my surprise as I put the iron down on my piece to press and when I lift it up – POOF – my square has disappeared. I tried to work around this by just pressing with a different area of my iron but eventually I decided that I’d have to break down and clean it. It never occurred to me that I had a fancy Black & Decker iron downstairs but more on that later.

– As I am wont to do when I have a problem, I turned to google. My query? “How to clean starch off iron”. I was too lazy to do the baking soda mix deal so I found this and decided to go the dryer sheet route. But I use Downy, not fabric softener sheets so I went to another go to when I have a problem – Mama. When we went bowling, she gave me a couple of sheets and when I got home I tried it. I was not impressed. I still had a bit of sticking and now brown flakes were attaching to my fabric. It was then I remembered the Black & Decker.

– I am perplexed as to where to go from here – problems with block or problems with new iron?

Let’s get the iron out of the way first.

– The Black & Decker iron is HEAVY! I thought I was going to pull out my shoulder the first time I lifted that thing. But it ironed like a dream, so I can deal with it until I get my other one cleaned. I was happily sewing along when all of a sudden, I hear this piercing beeping coming from behind me. My reaction:

It was my fancy smancy iron, whose instruction manual had long been lost, screeching at me with a red light flashing the message that something was wrong. Was it over heating? I don’t usually iron so what do irons do if they overheat? Explode? When I didn’t show up downstairs would hubby eventually come to check on me? Would he find a bloody, iron shrapnel impaled mess? I bravely confronted the scary iron and discovered, to my dismay, that it had an auto-off feature and was warning me to use it or lose the heat. Great! Now I have to sew with a timeline hovering over me.

– Now that block. Here is the first instruction: Start by cutting the Color 1 5-1/8″ x 10-1/4″ strip into two 5-1/8″ squares. Ummm, What 5-1/8″ x 10-1/4″ strip? Was a page missing? I thought, and remember I didn’t do math, why would I cut a strip and then cut squares when I could just cut the square in the first place. So that’s what I did. All of the directions called for these “strips” and it never occurred to me that there might be left over squares to use elsewhere.

– I began the assembly. Looked at the diagrams and went on to sew the colors incorrectly. Ripped, resewed and still found that I sewed one back together the same way it was before I ripped it. This happened on every step except final assembly. I also had to recut color 1 as the triangles were too small to attach to the intended unit and I had to measure the unit to get the correct size. I should have caught a clue at this point. Number 1 daughter (Nikki) called during all this but it was ok as she has a mouth like a sailor anyway.

– Final assembly. Directions say, “Now sew the Color 3 2-5/8″ square to the bottom right edge of one of the larger pieced units, starting at a point 1/4″ from the inner edge of the square and stitching to the outer edge…”. What 2-5/8″ square??? I had subcut all my squares into triangles. So, I cut the square and started the assembly. All was good until the final piece. Was this the infamous “Y-seam” that quilters are so scared of? At this point I was tired and frustrated and just wanted to be done so I didn’t google anything about the Y-seam and it certainly shows in my block.

– Ta-da here it is. I didn’t measure it, but I think it came out 10ish inches or so. I have no clue why it’s so tiny. I like my colors though! And what was playing when all this fun came to an end? “Losing my Religion” by R.E.M. – Appropriate I think.

Do yourself a favor – check out Marsha’s blocks from the links above.

– Took a trip to WalMart and upgraded my starch as well as picking up something to clean my iron:

I’ll let you know how they work out.

– I’m trying to figure out EQ8 and you’ll get a full update on the trials and tribulations of that soon. I want the final block in Amy’s quilt to be Block 9 in NQC’s Pleiades Quilt Block Challenge but I need it reduced to 15″ finished. Anyone wanna volunteer to do this for me, please feel free!

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