March Block #3 “The Golden Fan”

Ugh, this week has been a bunch of unexpected events pushing out my time to sew and engage in my hobbies. My poor senior kitty lady is having to wear a cone and somehow even with the expensive flea treatment, and her being indoors only, she caught fleas in the new rental and she has been itching herself to death 🙁
I was hoping to be able to share a completed slow stitching project this week but alas it was not meant to be~ I also realized a lil too late that I was putting off machine sewing each day since I was feeling too lazy to swap out the walking foot for a normal 1/4” one as well as change out the needle from the ballpoint to something more suitable for piecing quilting cottons. It’s funny how pretty much everyone hates swapping sewing machine feet but once you go to do it the time it takes is like 2-5 minutes. This Friday morning I finally got over my procrastination at least with the sewing machine stuff.

Alrighty, so since last Friday there has been a handful of not too exciting Finishes this week. As they say nothing to write home about.
I finished unpacking all the moving boxes labeled “office stuff” and re-arranged and fully set up my own lil computer corner in the living room.
I finished volume 3 of ふらいんぐうぃっち (Flying Witch) a manga series I started awhile ago that I’m picking back up for my Japanese language immersion.
I found a black tee shirt and spiral cut around it 2.5” to create a binding for my Tee-Shirt Scraps quilt. When I measured it out I was shocked that it seems like the one shirt will be enough. I honestly thought I’d need 2 or 3 shirts for the binding alone.
And then right after switching out the machine feet this morning I finished block 3 of the M-MQAL. I missed the deadline last month to post block 2 before block 3 was released so no bonus clues for me for February. I could have made it with 10 minutes to spare (deadline is midnight the night before the next block is released) but instead of posting the completed block to the FB group I was updating my Neocities website and trying to get at least one GitHub commit in for the day.

Neocities has been another hobby I’ve picked up recently; learning some basic HTML and JavaScript to get a template customized and add all the fun widgets I want to. I’ve really enjoyed checking out other personal sites on Neocities. If you have fond memories of Geocities, flashing rainbow cursors, falling glitter page effects, or the 90’s and early Y2K net in general definitely browse and click around Neocities and sign some guestbooks.

Back to the block though. It was fairly straight forward and I didn’t run into too many issues. I decided to cut out the pieces for just one of the 4 required for the month and see how it goes. I figured there will be less chance of a critical failure doing it that way, and less chance I miss-cut fabric and have to buy more down the line or piece a bunch of scraps together.

The trickiest part was stitching in a quarter semi-circle. I haven’t worked with curves yet in quilting but have a bunch in garment sewing so I wasn’t too worried. I figured it shouldn’t be too much more difficult than setting in a sleeve cap. My first attempt didn’t go to poorly, only one little pucker in the seam that I decided to seam rip and re-stitch. The 1/4” foot with guide I had attached did make it a little difficult to see what was going on so I should probably swap to the simpler 1/5” standard foot my Juki comes with -_-

Now the moment of truth. How does the block measure up? The answer: a lil short >.< after pressing the block it was 12 1/4” square when it should be 12 1/2”. I’ve been sewing with a scant 1/4” seam on all seams not just the ones specifically mentioned so I figured if anything it should be slightly too big. I’ve been printing at the right settings and this time even checked the size guide and all seemed copacetic so not sure how things keep shrinking down. Welp, not going to worry about it too much. If all my blocks across the year are a bit on the twee side then they should all fit together just the same in the end. The finished quilt will just be a bit smaller than the stated finished measurements.

For a Finish it up Friday I figure it’s not too bad just nothing too flashy too show off and really yap about. Also hobbies are better in a slow and steady fashion instead of a sprint to the finish line.