I had worked up a plan very nicely for those brown 6.5” squares. Remember?

Well, I started sewing the sashing strips on to the blocks on Saturday and I noticed that either my cutting of the sashing blocks was very irregular, or the blocks weren’t all 6.5”. I hadn’t cut all of the blocks myself. In fact, some of them were cut by some ladies in a supporting church of ours in Indiana, USA, quite a while ago now. I had put them away a while ago. But I decided it was time to honor all their work and make something with them. They had cut some of them with scissors after marking on them with blue ink.

Let me show you.

However, before I had started working on the squares, I had assumed that they were all 6.5”.

Bad assumption.

As I sewed strips to each of them along one side, I noticed that sometimes the sashings seemed long. Hmm. I went ahead and measured various ones and they varied in measurement from 6” to 6.25” and 6.5” square - sorta. Guess I should have measured them first.

Oh my.

So, I knew that without redoing the blocks completely, I wasn’t going to be able to do my plan. Remember that?

Well, I then thought, “Well, I’m adding a 2” strip to one side - I can go ahead and add strips to all sides and make them wonky - all the same size!” I can then work from there, adding more sashing, cornerstones, etc.

My idea evolved - the blocks were at first 7.5” cut wonky.

Then I decided I didn’t like how little was added to the sides at some point, so I decided to make larger blocks by adding more fabric back to the side and put a thin sashing strip in between. Here is what evolved.

What I didn’t want to do was take the pieces back off that I had cut, or go and cut blocks down. I wanted the fastest, easiest solution to my problem that I could think of.

So I took my 6-6.5” squares and surrounded them with 2” of off white. I then put them a bit wonky and trimmed them to 7.5” square. Here’s a visual on how I did it. I used my 20” and 27.5” lines on the mat to help me. Click on the arrows to advance.

Then, because I didn’t want only that little bit of white on there, I added 1.5” strips around each 7.5” square. They ended up being 9.5” square.

Yeah. I did all that! It took most of one day.

It took a lot longer than I had originally planned. Remember I was going to make each of these “fast and easy finishes”. LOL. HA HA!

I only made it this far this week with this report. I did not feel like allowing UFO projects to take over my week of sewing.

Of course this one is 100 blocks - so it will be a nice big top when finished. I left it at this stage - the blocks all made and part of the sashing pieces cut.

I had to change and evolve my plan with this one so much this week that I didn’t even attempt work on another one.

The thing I did do, however, was work through piles of things on my sewing room floor that hadn’t been gone through for about two years.

Somehow I missed all of 2021 with cleaning out the sewing room ‘to the end’ - meaning, getting the ‘junk’ off the floor.

(For those of you who are new here - that was because I did work on a few things in Jan/Feb but in March my family in the states got sick with COVID and I began to have problems focusing - when finally in April I flew to the states to be with mom and help her recover - and for my son’s wedding in May. I returned to Poland in early August and then began work on charity quilting.)

So, I’m working on that - trying to deal with things as I come to them. Thankfully I already had my scraps cut up from downstairs, but as I go through this part of my sewing area, I am finding various things that need to be cut into strips and thrown into those baskets. I am doing that now. I am coming to the end of that, I think, as well, and that is very exciting. I want to get to where I can vacuum in my room again - as it’s been too much of a mess on the floor to do that. It’s felt very out of control for some time now. The feeling of order is something I am looking forward to.

But now that I’m not working on making tops in my UP Greens series anymore, it sort of feels like I have the energy to do this - now. I am not sure why, but sometimes my various proverbial balls get going pretty fast and I can’t handle any more mentally. Then, when I can finally put one down, then there is space to pick up another. Some can juggle more than I can - but I find I get too frustrated or just drop them all when I try to do too many at once.

So…there you are. I am very glad to have this progress report! Closer to getting one more top done! Check back in next time to see it as I’m planning on finishing this one next - then I’ll tackle another UFO baggie.

Thanks again for coming along with me on my quilting journey! I appreciate it!

Have a great day wherever you are!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!

Here’s one of the beauties we have!