That last post

Hmpf. Lessons I have recently learned.

• You guys are all so very nice. I actually knew that before.
• Extra nice are the folks who left me comments reassuring me and encouraging me to continue, even though I was too down to respond. Thank you. 
• Don’t layout a big project when only half done. You will be disappointed about your progress.
• Don’t combine anxiety about one project and frustration about another one AT THE SAME TIME. This will lead to more anxiety and frustration.
• Do distract yourself with other things, or non-quilt things. I’m still working on this. 

Here’s something small I did.

I remade this really pretty wonky star from the swap earlier this year. On the left is the original, rather beige background. On the right is the much better, scrappy white. Block is 12″ finished.

Small steps.

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Day 439, yesterday

Yay for sewing! Boo for mistakes¡

Yesterday I took advantage of a 25% off sale (bringing the price down to a mere 10$/m) and acquired the white solid I needed for the in-between bits for Gridded. Attempted to cut the squares (two sizes). Made a mistake, then made the same mistake again. Pushed through but grumpy making for sure.

When those were all cut, I went to put the glasses on my fancy fox. All went very well until I peeled the paper off. And then realized I hadn’t yet cut out the glasses. Swear words.

Packed it all in, went to bed early. Couldn’t get to sleep early. More swear words.

No pictures, because who wants to see what failure looks like?

Day 316

Day 316, where we take a look inside the workings of my brain.

I’ve been working away at the math and the yardage for the shadow/sashing on the polaroid blocks. I’m usually pretty good but this time it took me waaay longer than I will admit to figuring out. I started with the great-but-basic tutorial from Johanna @Stuff I Made. I went off the rails pretty quickly though; she and I used different polaroid block tutorials which I thought yielded the same results. I therefore got stuck on “if her block finishes at 4 inches and all these pieces are x, y, z inches, why the hell is mine different?” Incompetent buffoonery on my part!

I figured it all out though, yay me! So next I thought I would make a couple of test blocks to try different shadow colours. I don’t want to use a straight solid black but I found a couple of options in the garage stash.

On the left is a Timeless Treasures “sketch” fabric and the right is a lovely essex linen type fabric. It’s 54″ wide and I got it from an estate sale (2$/m). I split it in half with a friend who was visiting from Nova Scotia in 2014 and my half was over a metre.

I chose a light grey solid to go with both of these for the test blocks, then looked at the tutorial picture again. “Maybe I should try out a darker grey too” I thought so I chose a grey solid that was darker than my first choice. Can you see where this is going?

Here is my first test block:

I failed to check the contrast between the shadow and the grey solid. *headdesk*

“Maybe it will be better with the other potential shadow fabric?” I thought hopefully.

NOPE.

Test block no.3:

And block no.4

I think block no.4 is the winner, unless I try a lighter grey solid. That will be on a different, less frustrating day. But yay I got to sew today?

And because it’s Wednesday and this is definitely a work in progress, I’m linking up with