Today I made 72 of these star points. The points are blue though they show up as gray here. The watery blue batik represents water; this special dog loved the water. The creamy white background represents the diamond shape on the dog's chest.Tomorrow I'll trim these little blocks and the real fun will begin. I'll be able to put the four patches from yesterday together with the star points to make blocks. The tedious part is now done.
As I'm making this quilt, I'm now realizing why I've never considered myself to be a great piecer. It's all in the quarter inch seam! I always thought that if I used a quarter inch foot and sewed a straight seam, then my piecing should end up perfect. And it never did end up perfect.
Then I realized that when you press the seam to one side, a tiny bit of fabric is taken up by the fold. So even if you sew a seam EXACTLY a quarter inch from the edges of the fabric, the block will end up slightly too little. BUMMER!
So in order for everything to measure correctly, you have to always use a SCANT quarter of an inch. How scant, you say? It depends. It depends on the fabric weight. It depends on the stitch length. It depends on the pressing afterward. BIG BUMMER!
When I made the four patches, I had to sew a VERY scant quarter inch because the dog bed fabric was much heavier that the tradition cotton. But today, using only cotton on the star points, I just had to sew a slightly scant quarter inch.
What I want to know is, why do we even have quarter inch feet for our sewing machines? Why don't they make scant quarter inch feet?
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