Still "Aiming for Accuracy" and sometimes even succeeding, but mostly not

So to review, the kids have been back in school for two weeks and despite my best efforts my next pattern is still up on the design wall. In good news, so is the famous Daisy petal, which is now joined by a host of other Girl Scout badges and patches, all of which hang on the wall mocking my very existence every time I sit down at the sewing machine.

I think they multiply at night.

 

 

Here's hoping no one has been waiting with bated breath to see the next blocks I have completed in the Aiming For Accuracy QAL, because if so you would have long ago expired. Note that having exhausted myself trying to figure out if it was Quiltalong or Quit-a-long or Quilt-along, I am now simply using an acronym like the good wife of an ex-Air Force captain that I am. But if somehow you have managed to use your superhuman powers to stay alive for 6 weeks while holding your breath, I invite you to let it out as you may well need it to gasp in horror.

It isn't just the bad lighting. It really is pretty ugly.

Even the cute little deer in the center of that bottom star can't make this work for me.

 The whole QAL, which despite my above efforts has actually been rather fun, has been broken into "Lessons" each week, covering all sorts of topics designed to help quilters improve their accuracy and point-making skills, with a block to complete after the lesson. I've learned a ton, and have been completely won over by the idea of pressing seams open when you need to join points. Holy cow it really is like a million times more accurate. So I am thrilled with how I'm mostly making some technically close-to-perfect blocks. Which is as close to perfect as I am comfortable getting.

But the biggest lesson I have learned is that these fabrics, cute as they are, were utterly and completely the wrong choice for this project. As we may recall, I bought them on a whim at Sample Spree in Portland, not really knowing what I would do with them, and since there were 24 of them and I needed 24 for this project, it just seemed like a good choice to use the fabric bundle. Well, it was not. There is a decided lack of contrast in value amongst them, which sucks when I try to pick fabrics that are going to show the block designs to their full potential.

Then there is the lack of differences in scale of prints, all of them being in about the 1 1/2" to 2 1/2"  scale which makes them look really flat and muddy when they are put together. And the directionals! For the love of all that is holy, the directionals! Add in the fact that I had to have been somewhat tipsy or something when I chose the light blue as my contrast fabric, and the whole thing just makes me a little bit sad.

Was it Debbie Gibson who sang that song "Could have been so beautiful....could have been so right..."? Thankfully it may still help me out "on a cold and lonely night" or all would be lost. #80slyricsstuckinmyheadnow

 So let's move on to happier moments in quilting....the Two for Teal Mug Rugs! I am so thrilled by the photos I am seeing so far even as I await my own delights' arrivals in my mailbox. Check out the flickr as it is growing daily! I'm very happy to say that in this first year of the swap, we were able to raise $115 for OCRF, plus we are having a lot of fun. Aren't you sad you didn't join? There is always next year, hotties.

I'll be shipping this one off to a participant tomorrow. Being the lazy quilter that I am, I loved that all I did was scoop up a pile of scraps left over from last week's project and throw them together. Never even picked up my rotary cutter.

Doesn't stippling always look better when it is small? It's one of those great mysterious truths of quilting.

The back, to prove I used the swap fabric.