Sew Very Very Small Sampler...My Attempt

Happy Saturday! I've been working on this little sampler with 3 1/2"mini blocks. I found it here: http://weddingdressblue.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/tutorial-sew-small-sampler-quilt/  I thought it would be a great little project to get me acquainted with some traditional blocks, be a small project that I could complete quickly, and use up existing scraps. I also thought it would be fairly easy. As it turned out, it met all those challenges except the last.

Two of the blocks, the log cabin and the sawtooth star, I had to make twice in order to get them done to my satisfaction. The main difficulty I had was simply dealing with how small these blocks are. Each block is 3 1/2" (unfinished), so the individual elements were sometimes as small as 1" square. Small, indeed.

When I had all the blocks finished I thought the hard part was behind me. I started merrily on my way, sewing  3 1/2" white squares in between the blocks, with half square triangles and quarter square triangles (around the perimeter) that I cut from 3 1/2" square blocks. If I were a more experienced quilter it would probably have been obvious to me that the perimeter blocks had to be cut from larger squares than the typical blocks in order to leave room for the binding. But me, I had to actually get the first corner completely sewn together to realize that  if I put the binding on  the quilt I was currently making, I'd end up the corners of my patchwork blocks covered up by the binding.

That's when I put my thinking cap on and went back to my engineering / math background. Well, really it was just a little simple geometry...but I figured out that my perimeter HST's needed to be cut from squares that were 3 7/8" square and the four corner triangles needed to be cut from squares that were 3" square. Voila...it worked perfectly:

(Bravo to my daughter, Megan, holding the quilt for me!)

Of course, what you're seeing is the aftermath of the flubbed first attempt. There was a point when I had it all ripped out, my little blocks looked horrible with their edges all stringy and somewhat misshapen I wondered if I was going to be able to recover this project. Hence I'm doubly happy with how it turned out. I know it's hard to see in the photo, but I decided to quilt the patchwork blocks with a single circle. This gave me a chance to learn how to use that feature of my new sewing machine. (It's a little fussy, actually.)

Winding down the day, I can't omit mentioning that today is my dad's birthday. If he were still alive he'd be 74. Hardly a day passes that I don't think about him, but on his birthday those memories he left me are extra special. Sixteen years ago it hardly seemed possible to think about him without crushing grief; now I just have happy memories and feel blessed to have had such a special dad.