Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Boy quilt finish

I finished up that boy-quilt I made as a warm up after Indonesia - a bit of machine quilting and binding and done. 




I like the jungle fabric I used in one of the squares. I've had it for ages but it's quite dark and hard to use in a kid's quilt - maybe I can just eke it out into I-spy quilts for the next few years. My shelves are thinning out a bit (gasp!) so it might be time to go on another little shopping spree. I haven't bought any fabric (other than the cottons in Jakarta) for ages - it must be time for Hancocks of Paducah to have another free-international-shipping event! I can't resist them.


I broke with tradition and visited one of my local quilt shops on the weekend to buy some batting - I normally just go to the closest one but thought I would branch out and drive the extra five minutes down to Tuggeranong. Batting was fine but I had one of those shopping moments where I remember why my experiences of local quilt shops always seem completely different to anyone else's. People are always saying how expert and friendly the staff are... I seem to end up with the clueless one every single time. 



This is a 54-40 or Fight block - I wanted a ruler to cut the star points.  They look like a 60 degree angle but I just wasn't sure. Anyway the woman serving had no idea, but convinced herself that it was a 60 degree angle ... I shouldn't have gone along with it but I'm terrible when people have very firm ideas about things, it's hard to argue, so I bought it. 


Anyway of course it's not a 60 degree angle, after a full hour with google I figured out it's about 64.5 degrees, which is enough to make the "square" very much a "rectangle" if you try and use a sixty degree ruler. Which I confirmed through making one. Finding that out took me right back to sines and cosines and tangents!!! Oh my goodness, I haven't thought about that since 1986, and I didn't understand it properly then. But I did it, and the calculator on this little macbook can go all scientific when needed. Fantastic.


I see a border of equilateral triangles in my future. Have to use this goddamn ruler.

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