When Quilting Goes Bad

Have you ever looked at a travel brochure with white, sandy beaches and palm trees waving in the breeze?  Blue skies with white cottony clouds.  Not a soul in sight; just you and the warm sun on your skin.  Make you want to grab a margarita and hop on a plane right now, doesn't it?

And then you get there, and realize that the beach you so coveted in the brochure is actually covered elbow to elbow with  sweaty people and swarming sea gulls ready to attack and grab that hot dog right out of your hand.

I feel that way about the Craftsy Block of the Month right now.

The brochure promised FUN!  RELAXATION!  NEW SKILLS!  Instead I got frustration and seam rippers.

Ok, January and February's blocks were fun and exciting to make.  March is still in the to-do pile, and April made me jump out my seat with joy because the April blocks are all about hexagons!   I do so love hexagons.  Geometry is the only math subject I actually excelled at, because of all those lovely shapes with oh-so-many possible combinations.

Tingling with anticipation, and carefully cut out my hexagons and started on April's blocks.  

And then the swearing began.

I was instructed to carefully hand-stitch (gasp!) around each hexagon to turn it's edges under, and then glue them onto my background and applique them on.  Well...I have a little issue with the hand sewing.  1) I find it tedious, and 2) it hurts the carpal tunnel in my right hand, and 3) I thought we were going to learn to piece hexagons, something I'd always wanted to perfect, and this felt like cheating.

Being the rule-breaker that I am, I started assembling the blocks my own way.  Instead of hand sewing, I used Wonder Under on the backs of each hexagon, and fused them to the background fabric.  Then I satin stitched around each one with a big fat stripe of color.  Yes, the fabric puckered a bit.  No, I don't care.  When it's quilted at the end it'll even out a bit.  Besides, I like the way they are outlined now.  Sort of like coloring and staying in the lines.

(GAH!  The picture is upside down!  On my computer it's right side up, but when I load it here it flips.  This is the day for frustration, apparently.  Well turn your head to the side and picture the green strip at the bottom (like grass) and that other bit is the sun and rays.  Got it?)

On to block #2 for April.  It is two stripes of hexagons, again, hand-pieced and then appliqued on.  This time I tried using Anna Maria Horner's Super Circles technique, which is amazing.  If it works for circles it should work for hexagons, right?

You cut out your shape from cardboard, and cut a larger piece of aluminum foil.  Put your fabric on the foil right side down, put the cardboard on top, and carefully fold in the edges of the foil.

 Press it with your iron.  The foil gets hot, so let it cool a minute before unwrapping it.  

Out pops your shape, with the edges perfectly pressed under.

I made 13 of these little things, and then had to applique them on.  That's when things got really squirrel-y.   They kept shifting around and not staying in place, and the thread kept knotting up, so I just abandoned the whole thing and set off to crochet instead.

The moral of the story is:  Sometimes the Most Important part of doing a quilt block-of-the-month is learning what techniques drive you bonkers.  Better to figure that out when there is only one block to complete and not a whole quilt-full.