2 Be Square - Part 1

Caution: this post is long and therefore needed to be broken into 2 parts.

Did you see Pat's blog post today about her OP Quilt? If not, check it out.

Wow, what a weekend the OP was. I was on a natural high the whole weekend. I picked out fabric from my stash and played with them. I knew right from the start this was going to be a great stash quilt and I wanted it to be scrappy. Laid my fabrics out in 7 groups of 3. To make a total of 21 blocks. Only needed/wanted 20, but the extra could be used on the back. No problem. Everything is working out great. Seams for the most part all lined up. Only had to resew 3 or so. Not bad. They all came out 12". Wow, that's a first for me. Knew I did not want to sew them side by side because of all the seams. Sashing with corner stones was a must. I did not have any fabric for that. I only buy FQ's. Went to my local quilt store and showed the owner what I was doing and 45 minutes later we had fabric and thread picked for my OP quilt.

Black was the only fabric that would work with all the blocks. Everything else just did not look right. Found a nice orange for the corner stones that would not fight with all the other oranges in the quilt. I thought I would do a 4 patch border on the quilt. It would add a little something. I get tired of just plain fabric for the borders. I come home and start working on cutting and sewing everything together. Yesterday, as I am sewing my sashing to the blocks I notice the center sashing is not lining up with their neighbor. It's off 1/4". I email Pat to see if she had this same problem and what I might do to solve it. Long story short I did not square up my blocks before I cut them into 4th and any little issue is magnified. I should have known this, but I HATE TO SQUARE UP. Call it a lesson learned. ALWAYS SQUARE UP YOUR BLOCKS. I did find ways to make my blocks work so they did not look off, but some of them will just be off, like me.
Here is Pat's answer to my question: "well this is not about matching blocks... so if anyone asks you just say you were doing a Pat Sloan creativity workshop and this is the way they are supposed to be as that is the truth!!"

I got two groups of four all sewn with the sashing and was getting antsy to see what the 4 patch border would look like I tried it next to the sewn blocks. This is when HORROR sets in for me.

Tune in tomorrow to find out about my horror.

Charlie