Saturday 14 June 2014

Yellow in June - week 24; Celtic Solstice (no yellow)

The RSC colour for June is yellow. I managed to make 4 blocks this week.

(clockwise from top left:)
Lovers Knot; Mock LeMoyne Star; Wacky Pinwheel; Alamo Star
For the Alamo Star I got to use the Tri Recs rulers I had bought to make the other project I was working on this week: Celtic Solstice, which was Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt last December. This quilt has three borders, the middle of which is pieced with the same triangle in square units as in the Alamo Star.

Wednesday I went shopping for wadding and fabric for the plain borders in the morning and got the inner border cut and attached and the middle border pieces assembled in the afternoon and evening.  Funny (ha ha!! NOT) thing: why are all the middle border pieces 3" shorter than the inner border? As I've only made one quilt with three borders, and for that didn't have a pattern, I thought there was maybe some quilting secret plan (like nesting seams) that called for a shorter border. Mind you 3" is rather a lot to ease in to fit. I needed the whole of Thursday to get them all on: all 3" short and NO pleats in the inner border (a few gathers but once quilted they will hopefully disappear, I thought.)





Friday morning I got the two side pieces of the outer border on: doesn't look too bad, does it?
(that's because I smoothed it for the photo)







But all is not well. Never mind a Celtic Solstice, this looks like an Atlantic Gale.


It will seriously NOT LIE FLAT, and not just the inner border: the whole thing.

Of course not, I can hear you saying across the miles, stupid. Only at this point did it cross my mind that there might, just might, be a mistake in the pattern? Wading through all Bonnie Hunter's posts for January, and she does write a lot, I finally found a post where she gave the correct number of pieces for the second border: 22 units for the sides and 24 for the top and bottom. I was away from my computer in the first two weeks of January so missed it. Of course, everyone else deduced for themselves that there was a mistake, especially when there were 4 units left over! Just me, 6 months later, following a print out of the original 1 January post, tried to fit 62" onto 65"! Only one thing for it:

 seam ripper! 

To date I've undone about one quarter, better get back to the frog song!

I'm linking up to 

Soscrppy

so hop over there to see what other quilters have made this week.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

11 comments:

Dasha said...

You poor thing! What a total bummer. So glad you didn't do a tanti and throw the whole lot into the bottom of the cupboard, because it is beautiful.
The yellows are pretty too.

Carla A Few Of My Favorite Things said...

Bummer that you have to use the seam ripper, but at least you figured it out! It will make you jump for joy once it gets redone and it lays flat.

Kate said...

Definitely not fun, at least you found it before Bonnie took the instructions down.

Love all your yellow blocks. Nicely done.

Nell's Quilts said...

If you want to feel better read my post about my green misadventure. I ripped apart a whole quilt but it was worth it in the end. You'll find you are glad you did too when the quilt lies flat. What fun yellow fabrics in your RSC blocks.

Deb@asimplelifequilts said...

Sorry about the frogging but a flat quilt is so worth it in the end. I love your yellows... that graphic print really makes those blocks pop!

LA Paylor said...

That's an unhappy moment... well now you have it flat and right and know it wasn't you!
The yellow blocks are great, the fabric on the bottom left block is dynamic!
LeeAnna Paylor lapaylor.blogspot.com

Cathy Tomm said...

Great Yellow sampler blocks. I need to get to work on those.

Vireya said...

What a pain! Glad you got it figured out, though. It will look great when it is all together.

Sheila said...

Great blocks. Your Celtic Solstice is going to be beautiful!

Jo said...

You have done well with your yellow blocks.
Well worth the trouble on you Celtic solstice quilt. It is lovely

Jo Ferguson said...

I was working on a quilt, with a friend, recently and we both kept running into the same issues making the blocks. Because we we're both having problems it didn't take long to figure out the pattern might be wrong. If I'd been working on my own, I don't think I would have figured it out for quite some time. Your quilt is gorgeous and when all is said and done, it will be well worth the effort ant the miles on your seam ripper...I promise.