Sewing at Night

I finally tried it. And no one woke up. Total success. So, here we go. The only thing stopping me now is the fact that I have two Alias dvds coming today from netflix.

So Where Are These Fabulous Triangles?

I'm getting all the strips together for the triangles. It's taking a long time as I'm hesitant to sew at night. I shouldn't be worried, but it feels loud. Owen sleeps through it, I'm so not worried about him. But Lily is a light sleeper and I live in fear of waking her. Sometimes I literally tip toe past her door. She sleeps deeper than she use to, but old habits die hard as they say. So the triangles are progressing but not like lightning fast or anything. I may try it tonight just to see if it's really an issue. The other thing about the triangles is that I have to iron every seam after I sew it. I can't let it go even two seams. And it's a bit tiresome to be going back and forth all the time. But I'll see what I can do tonight.

I'll Have to Think About This More, But...

I may have solved the letter conundrum. (What conundrum? Think for a minute about the logistics of putting Double Letter Score and the like on the squares, to scale too.) I was looking at a JoAnn's ad, I get them in the mail, and apparently iron on letters are on sale. Excuse Me? Iron on letters!!! Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles!
Then of course I googled 'em and seeing as I'm not in the market for metallic or fuzzy the options are rather limited and not to my scale. Then my little eyes beheld what just may be the solution. There was a sidebar HP ad. And how you may ask is Hewlett Packard going to solve this?
I can print my own iron on letters. I've done it before, a la Julie Veroff. So I am currently thinking iron-on and I'll embroider around them to finish it nicely, but for now that's the plan. Maybe on further analysis I'll find some gaping hole in this proposition, but let's hope not. I'll just have to tell Nathan Lindsey not to wash it on a daily basis, but seeing as it's a quilt I don't imagine that will be an issue.
I'll have to test this method though, I don't want it to tackify my endeavor.

In Theory and Actuality

I tried my triangle theory. I only got one side of the triangles. So when I do this with the real fabric I'll essentially have to do it twice; cutting one set at 60 degrees and the other set at the opposite 60. So that will be rather time consuming, but seeing as I'll already have some sewn it will also skip a step.

So here are the strips (made with leftovers from the flip flop quilt), an inch and a quarter wide.
I used my pincushion as a standard so the size was evident. (I have enough biology to know that pics "in the field" need something to give a sense of size.)Cutting at sixty degrees, notice the acrylic ruler, I seriously adore it.One strip, three quarters inch wide-ish.One half of a triangle. In the actual I'll have to cut mirror images as well and hook 'em together. These are little by the way. The squares on the ruler are an inch.
And for those who missed it: the flip flop quilt. The flip flops have ribbon straps and really fit Jenna's feet. The best part though is the quilting, if I do say so myself.

The Triangles

On a Scrabble board there are triangles across the white surrounding the colored squares. I've been... dreading is probably the best word, the task of cutting out the triangles, seriously they're small. Last night I finished cutting all the white stripes out and starting brainstorming on the triangles. I think I can presew strips of white red white blue white etc and then just bias cut at sixty degrees and have the squares of triangles if you will. (I don't expect that to make sense to everyone.) The issue once again is seam allowances. The white and colors will already be sewn, but I'll need seam allowances on all the other sides. Last night I couldn't quite think my way around it, especially as it needs to be just under 3/4 inch. But I'm thinking this is totally the way to do it. I may have to pick up some more white but I'm heading into Thornton tomorrow anyway, the kidos are playing with Grandma and Grandpa. And being as I am on JoAnn's mailing list I get coupons emailed to me all the time.

As Promised

And that's just the squares. 225 to be exact. And the stack is four and a half inches high. I still have to cut the triangle parts that go in the white around the colored squares and I'm working on my pile of white strips. But, the squares themselves are all cut. I think I could be to piecing within a week or two, it really just depends on how motivated I am once the kids are in bed. Honestly sometimes I'm not all that super motivated.

Resolved

So double meaning here: the white issue is resolved. Essentially I'm just going with half an inch, really one tenth of an inch is not a huge deal, that's what I'm telling myself, maybe when I'm poised to cut I'll decide that it needs to be .416 of an inch, but let's hope I can handle the difference.
And the second resolved meaning: I'm finishing Lily's drapes tonight so I will be all cleared to go scrabble crazy and consequently I will have pictures to post. Right now I could take a picture of my huge stack of squares, but I'm thinking that I'll hold off on that 'til I have the extra 20 brown ones cut; just so it's more ridiculous looking. Because really it's a lot of squares.
So essentially, exciting pictures to come. (cause honestly, how boring is a blog of quilting progress with no quilting progress to show.)