More Pinwheel Progress

 

 Starting just a little out of order here, because to me this is the most interesting picture--it's my current stage of "pinwheeling!" When I quit for the night, I had the first dozen of these up to this stage.

I've been busily sewing most of the day, a good thing to do when it's hot and muggy outside. I kept getting reminders of the outside temps whenever I would venture out to the garage, which is where the laundry lives. Yes, sewing and doing laundry are pretty compatible activities.

 So one of the first things I did today was to finish sewing all the yellow center squares to the first 150 blocks. I had counted the yellow squares and the pinwheels both, but I wound up having to make some adjustments anyway.

Apparently my math failures extend to counting to 50; With these, I set them up in stacks of 10 and then groups of 50. I'm pretty sure there are now 150 of them.


The Supervisor was giving me a bit of the old "turn the back on the annoying woman" routine. That tail makes a great brush for whipping blocks out of the way.

I really did not want to sew any tail fur into the quilt blocks. He finally got fed up and left.

Here's my 3 stacks of 50 blocks with yellow squares attached, with a second square added.

Today's entertainment was provided by Lord Peter Wimsey, who sadly is not nearly as entertaining as Albert Campion or Inspector Alleyn.

I had to take a break for a quick viewing of Wyrd Sisters, a cartoon version that's really only fair to middling. However, it was a gift from a friend, so the price was right.

This was just before I quit for the night. I had run out of thread and had to put a new spool on the machine, which seemed like a good breaking place.

Especially since the Supervisor was putting his foot, er, his butt, down. My DVD had reached the end as well.

This one was The Nine Tailors, and while they took a few liberties with the story lines, I think it worked all right. In a book, long stretches of exposition are okay, but in a film it can tend to drag.

I seem to be getting frequent visits from the second cat, too. She's very curious about what's going on up here that is more fascinating than petting the grey cat.

She's really hard to work around, because she wants attention, and petting, and she's determined to get it.

She's also fascinated by things that go up and down, and I really have no desire to sew into a cat. I've sewn into my own fingers (twice) and we're not doing that again, ever, not to me or anyone else.

I can't decide if this look means she's daring me to turn on the DVD player and put some fabric on the machine, or if she just wants to be snorgled.

She really is a pretty little girl, though like most shy and skittish cats, she's a little unpredictable. I try hard not to scare her--don't want to mess up her progress!

Last night while I was watching Project Runway and knitting,she came and curled up next to  me in the chair and purred away.

Then she climbed up onto my lap for some skritching. This picture is proof that she lets me actually touch her.

I think she was bored with the opening episodes of PR. (I DVR'd them  so I could watch when I wanted to. I am doing that more and more often now.)  I thought it was interesting, and there were some pretty decent designs, though some of the others stank.

But I love Tim Gunn to bits, and he even managed to make that awful plaid jacket look natty and stylish.

So, a couple more pictures of sewing yellow squares to their first units. I told you, I'm doing this upside down today.

By the way, Math Fail reared its ugly head again on me. However, I was able to catch my mistake in time.

What happened was that I had used up all the white fabric I had in cutting the triangles and the rectangles, so I needed to get more for the setting triangles on the quilt. Tuesday seemed like a good time to do this, since I was at the shop and they'd just gotten in some new white-on-whites.

I need 27 squares*, each 17.5", for the setting triangles for all 6 quilts. Round that up to 18"--I'd rather have my triangles a little larger so I can trim them down or "float" the piece--and I can get 2 out of a half-yard of fabric. I was preparing to buy 14 yards of fabric--cut the first 7 yards and started cutting squares when it hit me.

Two squares out of half a yard means 4 squares out of a yard. Seven yards will give me 28 squares. Oops! I did wind up getting another yard and a half to cut the corner triangles** out of since there wasn't enough left from cutting the other squares. But I ditopsdn't have to buy 14 yards...

* and ** for those of you who don't quilt, the setting triangles and corner squares are cut differently to avoid having bias edges on the quilt. Squares are cut diagonally and then again on the diagonal to yield 4 setting triangles--the square used is generally 1 1/2 times the size of the blocks in the quilt--and the corner triangles are a square, the size of the blocks or a little larger, cut in half. All will be clear when you see me starting to put these tops together.

I'm confident that I will get there. So far I've been able to avoid the "Ooooh---shiny!!" temptations. But it's hard!!