Day 320: Trust me, I knew better than to jump right into this project without working out the foibles first, but now after making four blocks from discards, I think I'm ready for the Big Time. The first block (upper left) was horrible. The meets didn't meet (a faceting term for the points at which multiple lines intersect) and the finished block was so distorted that it couldn't even be stretched to an approximation of a square. The second attempt resulted in better meets, but the block was still cattywampus. With the second block, I'd also tried an experiment to see if I could change it up to seven segments instead of six, and while it worked as planned, the outer wedges were too much reduced in size to be aesthetically pleasing. The third block buckled due to differences in how I handled the fabric, but it was more square than either of the first two. In between trials and errors, I was alternately cutting out millions of little bitty wedges and watching YouTube videos, and found several helpful suggestions. I also discovered that my sewing machine (a cheap Brother) makes it almost impossible to sew a perfect 1/4" seam if the needle is in the center position. Since the needle cannot be put on the right for some bizarre reason, the solution is to place the bulk of the fabric on the right, and shift the needle to the left so that the feed dogs both contact cloth. Sewing with the seam allowance to the left is awkward and counter-intuitive, but it allows me to align the edge on the 1/4" mark. This process plus some hints about pressing let me produce an almost perfect block on the fourth try. The term "learning curves" has taken on a whole new meaning, but I think I've got this whipped.
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