Craftsy Block of the Month Club

I actually discovered www.Craftsy.com on Facebook and really like going there for inspiration and ideas.  They offer many pay classes BUT starting in January they have a free block of the month class. This is a very smart idea because by doing this class you are able to see how they set up and teach online – a good way to get people (ME) interested in buying a class one of these days. My only concern
at the time was that they are making a full sized throw and top stitching one of those intimidates me. We live in extremely limited space and in fact my sewing/craft area is a wee corner of our bedroom on top of a butchers block on castors. I would LOVE to have an entire, spacious, brightly naturally light studio devoted to my work (my sweet loving greedy green eyes are looking at you Happy Zombie! www.thehappyzombie.com/blog/?p=206   Is that not just wonderful?) but when your living in “one of the most expensive cities in the world” (I am quoting my mother-in-law who saw this on the evening news) you have to find ways to utilize every inch of space. Sooooooo, ok that is a needlessly long and rambling explanation as to why I decided to divide all the fabric measurements in the instructions in half. My logic was that if the instructions told me to cut the fabric 4”/4” I would instead cut it 2”/2” and end up with a block of the month wall hanging. Should work right?  So each month you get to make two blocks and I decided to try out two different colour schemes:

After sewing each I’m not 100% sold on either colour scheme, but that was not the biggest problem, this is:

I have no idea how this happened – TWICE!
The differences in size are huge, so much so that cutting the largest block down to fit the smallest would be very noticeable. Also, what was I going to do if this happened to future blocks?  I realized I had to buckle down and learn how to topstitch.  So I took the blocks and did just that.

I do need more practice, but it is actually so simple I’m still smacking myself in the head for not taking it on sooner.  I watched several videos on YouTube (what did we do before the internet again?!) The most important thing I will say about it is make sure you have the right pressure foot and a machine that will drop down your feed dog.

So I’ll post my progress on the Craftsy block of the month club as I work my way to my first real sized quilt – fingers crossed!