Hounds Toothing...

I know I have been very terribly quiet. But I have been single mindedly working on my hounds tooth quilt. Well, when I have time to actually sit down and sew. The weekend was busier than I expected and I didn't get nearly as much accomplished as I thought I would. But board games were played and shopping was done and taxes filed, so it was still a successful weekend. It feels so good to have my taxes out of the way! :D And I did them all by myself- no desperate calls to my mother (who works for a company that makes tax preparing software) for explanations of this option and that box. It was a proud moment.

Let me show you my progress...

I don't know how well you can see, but this is the first block I put together... and it was all wrong! Both the purple and light block were cut wrong and I just happened to select those two to use for my first block. UGH. So in one direction they were perfect 11 3/4" and the other they were 11 1/4". BIG difference. It was pretty bad. But, amazingly, there were only maybe 3 other squares cut wrong. Which makes me thing that maybe these were at the end of the strip and weren't meant to be included in the stacks in the first place.. But I found them all and set them aside so no more mistakes would be made.

Once I figured that out and had a sample block that was actually right, I started chain piecing. One light block and one stripey block then one dark block and one stripey block... 2 episodes of Torchwood later and I was done! As you can see, they haven't all been pressed yet. Because I get really sick of it. So I figure I'll go til I run out of rectangle sets and then press some more.

Which brings me to the next problem I had (which I didn't take pictures of..). I had starched all of the stripey blocks because of the bias edges, so thought it might be a good idea to starch the solid half so the whole thing would match in the stiffness department... Well. This was apparently a bad idea because some of my purple squares started SHRINKING. Yeah. It was terrible. And so annoying! Because it was ONLY purple squares, but not ALL of the purple squares. What?? How does that happen? My only guess is that because I didn't buy it all in continuous yardage (I bought a bit of purple when it was on sale because I loved it... then decided it would be great hounds tooth... then decided I wanted it Queen sized. So 3 cuts total) there were differences in the shrinkage? Maybe? I don't know... They only shrunk by about 1/8" but that was enough to throw everything off. I don't really have a solution to this. I stopped starching, but now I'm afraid of what will happen when the top is all sewn together. But I'm pressing on anyway because I MUST.

So now I have a little stack of blocks sewn together.

And I am so proud of how well all my little points are matching up in the center so far :D I am just trying not to worry about it all being ruined by the shrinky problem... I had enough left over purple yardage so that I still have enough squares. So that's good I suppose.

So that's what I've been doing. And that's what I'm going to keep doing so it is all DONE and off of my table. Honestly, I haven't taken a break from it because I'm afraid that if I clear it all away I will lose all motivation and not want to come back to it. And I really, really want this on my bed! So I am soldiering on...

Hopefully the top will be done by the end of the week (and by that I mean SUNDAY) and I can move on to other things and have more exciting pictures to show you. Like this mug.

This is what I drink coffee from every day. Isn't it cute? My sister bought it for me for Christmas because she's awesome and knows me :D The only problem with it is that as I drink, a little bit of coffee collects between the eyes... Maybe not the best design for a mug (I think the handle should have been on the other side... but maybe this is a left hand mug?) but it's so cute, I am letting it slide. Please excuse the mess in the background. My computer desk is usually quite a disaster.

So I will leave you now. I know I still have another award to talk about... but Hounds Tooth is calling my name. I must respond!

Linking up with WiP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced!