Fighting Points

Jewel blocks nearing completion

I swear that something must have shifted slightly between sewing together my test block and cutting/stitching all the rest of the pieces to this quilt.  I had done lots of pinning over Chick Weekend, and recently started stitching up what I had pinned.  After the first dozen seams, I stopped to inspect my work.  The good news is, I'm terribly consistent.  The bad news?  I'm consistently off by at least 1/8".  Which means none of the points were lining up like I wanted.  I spent an evening ripping out seams and repinning the blocks.  (And then spent another evening ripping out seams on at least another 50 blocks, as I discovered I had sewn the wrong colors into the block.)

The triangles are too small compared to the middle piece - so basically I have too much material on one side, and not enough on the other.  As a bonus, the short side is cut along the grain, so there's no give.  I'm going to have to ease every single one of these seams, and pray I don't get puckers.

Ugh.

I'm not sure why my test block looked so good.  Maybe just sheer luck.  But there are one hundred and forty blocks, two seams apiece, with three points per seam to hit just right.  I sewed up a bunch of them last night, and they're looking better.  The iron is my friend.  I've also learned a lot with the red and green blocks, so lagging behind on the blue blocks has turned out to be a blessing.  I may actually complete them on the first pass.

Hmm.  I might stick with simple 9-patch quilts after this baby.