FW Progress Blocks 31-40 (class 4)

P. S. Blocks 38 & 101, I hate you!

Block 38

Class 4 of the FWR was rather challenging for me this time!  Not only did it take me 3 weeks to complete, it took me over 2 1/2 hours to complete block 38 and 2 hours to complete block 101!

In this class, we are introduced to 'Corner Triangles'.  Sounds simple enough, but boy, if your not accurate and are off by as little as 3 threads, it screws up the whole block!  I am glad that I have a new, sharp ripper!

Farmers Puzzle

We start the class with "The Farmers Puzzle".  This block introduces the Corner Triangles concept that will be used for the rest of the class.  I did, after I created 8 of the 10 blocks, master this concept.


The basic concept for a corner triangle is just what is says, a triangle on the corner. Sounds easy, huh?  NOPE!

Corner Triangles

The steps are several and are available in Karen's lesson, so I won't go into them here, but needless to say, there are a few that have to be correct for your finished product to look like the picture and then fit with the rest of the pieces in the block.

Now I have always been a fan of the 'startie/stopie' fabric, a small piece of scrap fabric that you start and end your stitching with, but golly gee, it does not stop the ends of triangles from going down into the throat plate of your machine.  Because I use several different needle positions, I don't use the single needle throat plate, so I have been struggling with the machine eating my fabric for a while now. . .  'till that light bulb went on in my head.


I had ordered some paper piecing squares from Missouri Star Quilt Company, because #1 they were on sale and #2, I thought I would like to try paper piecing some day, but mainly because of #1. They were sitting on my table and I was frustrated with what I was doing and looked right at them.  Humm, I wonder if?  I took a couple of sheets of this really thin, thinner than tracing paper, sheet, cut it into 1 inch squares.


I put one of these little squares under the presser foot, took a couple of stitches on the paper to anchor and then the corner of the fabric on the paper and continued to stitch.  PERFECT!  No eaten corners.  To remove this, fold the paper in half, clip the stitches and then pull the paper off toward the outside.  This leaves the stitches untouched and the corner perfect.

The corners were perfectly supported as they went over the hole! (more on why I didn't put on the single needle throat plate in a much later post)


Once I had that problem solved, I went on. I usually do the blocks in order of how they are given in the lesson, but this time, I deiced to pick and choose, saving what I thought would be the hardest ones to do for last, i.e. Block 38 & 79,  BUT then came block 101, looked easy enough . . . .

This little sucker is made up of 1 11/16 squares.  It is on a 5 grid, is 6 1/2 inches unfinished.  Didn't think to much of it, Magic 8 and a few HST, what could be so hard about this one?  HA!  I re-cut every piece of this block at least twice because I could not for the life of me get the pieces to come out to 1 11/16 inches!  So I decided to make them all larger than needed and and trim them down.  That worked, 2 hours later, I am done and I am never going to make this one again!!!!

After I was all done with this block, I was reading one of the FB groups that I belong to, and came upon a posting for creating HST that sounded interesting.  It is on Little Miss Shabby's blog page. Scroll down to see what she is suggesting for making perfect HST.

With the FW, there are a lot of HST required.  Blocks 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 20, 21, 26, 27, 32, 34, 35, 38, 41, 42, 45, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 62, 64, 67, 71, 76, 79, 84, 87, 88, 91, 93, 95, 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, all use HST, some just a few and others the whole block is made of HST. This method sounds like it would be a great way to get the HST square and the points perfect.  I think from this point forward,I will cutting my squares just a bit bigger than suggested and then trimming them down.

I figure that the little bit of waste that it will cause is much less than the waste created when re-making the blocks several times to get it correct.

So this lesson is finished and I am in hopes that I will not have as many issues in the future, granted it was only a couple of blocks that gave me issues but that is two too many.  I have also looked at the blocks to come... we will revisit this thought later..........

So here are the blocks of Lesson 4

P.S. Block 38 & 101, I still hate you!

Looooongg few weeks

It has been a while since my last post (boy, that sounds religious) Anyway, working a 40 hour week and then putting 55 hours of OT into that two weeks, leaves little time for anything other than a quick snack and sleep.

Sooo, lets catch up.

Karen posted lesson #4 for the FWRQ at the end of March.  I purchased and downloaded it a week later, that was how far behind I was at that point.

A week after that, I started to work on my notebook. What that entails is starting a new quilt layout in EQ7, pulling the blocks, that I drew just for this, for the lesson and adding the fabrics that I will be using for these blocks. Printing the picture so I can add it to the notebook and know where the fabrics go. (left page)

After that, I print two copies of the lesson and have at one with rotary cutter and one I keep at my desk.  On the right hand page, I put the information about the block which has how many of what to cut from each color.  At the bottom of the page, I put any special construction techniques that were provided.

On the page that is at my desk, I write down the fabric numbers from EQ that I have chosen.  I use this to pull my fabrics and if as I am pulling them, I don't like the real fabrics, I can make the changes there before they are permanent in the book.

In the middle of the clipped instructions, I write the color, color number and when I am cutting the fabric, I put a swatch of the fabric next to this information.

OCD.. maybe.

A week after that, I started to cut the pieces, I got 3 blocks done and that was it!  Bad sewing week, but life gets in the way of so much good sewing time!


So today, I was able to get the rest of the blocks cut and into the notebook.  That is all that I got done, but yesterday, I went to the local home improvement store and picked up two sheets of sound board and 6 1/2 yards of tan felt (thank goodness for 50% off coupons!) and today, I created my new design wall.

We didn't measure the height of the wall, thought the boards were shorter than the wall.. dummy us!  The boards are held on the wall by sheer squeeze force and 4 screws in the middle so they don't bow out.  Total cost.... hope you are sitting down for this $46.35!!!  Yup, another one of my under $50 dollar projects.  The boards are 4 feet wide by 8 feet tall, so I have a square design wall of 8 x 8 FEET!!!!  The felt is almost the same color as the paint on the wall, so they blend in beautiful.

So all in all, still not caught up, I have to create the FW Blocks and I am in the midst of a mystery on one of the sites that I belong to and clue 4 is about to be released and I haven't even done clue 3..<sigh>

BUT the good news is that I have a 4 day weekend coming up!  Guess where I am going to be?!!

Happy Farming!