Apparently My Math Isn't So Good

How did this happen? I am so frustrated right now I could scream. And the worst part is I got too cocky and didn't follow my own advice. There was a little voice in my head that said "make the last row of white thicker than in the instructions so if you're off you'll have a cushion to cut the block down to size." That would be so much easier than trying to "fatten" the block up to size. Ugh.

Sewing on the last round, getting cocky...

Last month was my month as a quilter in the do. Good Stitches Bee and I asked the group to make Stash Buster Blocks from Little Miss Shabby's awesome tutorial found here. I waited until all the blocks from the other members in the group came in before making my own blocks so I could see if we needed to balance anything out in the quilt.

Beautiful little 1/4" seams. I'm not crazy.

Murel made a beautiful block using the Stash Buster #2 tutorial for one of her blocks and I decided that I wanted to showcase it on the back of the quilt so I needed to make three blocks to round out the quilt top. I cut my strips and squares based on the measurements in the tutorial and started putting the blocks together. I considered cutting the strips on the outside layer a little fat, just in case my seams were slightly off, that way I could cut it down to size. But when it came time to sew the outer strips on the block, I measured and got cocky. Okay math is not my strong suit, but I swear that according to my math I should have been okay with the correct sized strips.

How am I 1.75" too short?!

I was very wrong. My block turned out to measure 10.75" instead of the desired 12.5". That's 1.75" difference! Arugh! I shouldn't have gotten cocky. So it's back to ripping stitches. The most frustrating part is when I measured my seams they were all measuring out at 1/4". And I used my trusty 1/4" foot on all the seams so I don't know where I went wrong and SOOOO grossly wrong.

This time I added 3" boarders and cut them down to size.

So here is my Tip of the Day: When in doubt, always make your last row thicker than you think. It's so much easier to trim a block down to size than it is to try and bulk it up to size.