The solid scraps

I've started to turn my hundred foot-square solid scrap blocks into a quilt - and it's going to be enormous, even though I'm only using 81 of them. Nine feet by nine feet, or about 270 cm square, which is larger than I normally do them. Because of this, I thought it might be time to re-visit the quilt-as-you-go method, which would mean I could quilt the smaller individual pieces before joining. Or even not quilt them at all, just rely on the joining seams every twelve inches to hold the things together.

I hadn't forgotten how hideous the moth in the window experience was, and how badly that ended up. But I thought if I took a little more care with the joining I wouldn't get such a bad level of distortion. And, because you can't tell where a scrappy block stops or finishes, I could trim it square if needed. So I joined a measly six squares together.



It looks fine from the front, but the back is an absolute mess of bunched and unhappy fabric, where I had to shuffle and pull and squeeze. And trim, my god did I have to trim. Even over six blocks I ended up trimming more than two inches off one side to keep it square enough to add the next round. What on earth? Why is this so bad? I even used pins for chrissake. And as I did it I could feel my irritation rising, and swearing began, and everything that I so disliked about that dreadful moth quilt came rushing back and I just thought - no, no way, we're not doing this. So I stopped at six and will piece the 81 other blocks together in the normal way and just deal with its enormousness somehow.

On a brighter note, number two son got his school report on Friday, so thought he deserved churros like we did last year. Because apparently, once is enough for it to be a tradition. I refused, on the basis that it was $7 for a hot chocolate drink that no-one could finish not to mention the actual $11 churros, so he asked if he could make them and I couldn't think of a reason why not.



Choux pastry which he did without supervision, and then some assistance with the deep frying, but he whipped up the chocolate sauce without any help. And they were absolutely delicious. Not a health food but perfect for a very cold and foggy winter weekend.