Day: April 21, 2007

For once, the stars were in alignment which made my technology work and me able to solve my template problem. As I mentioned, I was unable to locate my original EQ file. It has disappeared from my computer or was saved to such a weird location that I will only be able to find it by stumbling across it when I am looking for something else.

Since I had been researching the Cross Block’s real name, Flowering Snowball, I had found EQ’s version of the block in their database and had saved it to EQ6. I decided to try and print templates from their block to see if it would work with the piecing I have already done.

There were a lot of ifs in this little escapade. Since my printer was moved down to the laundry room, I haven’t been able to print from my computer. I thought I would need to get some boosters for my wireless network before printing would work again. In the meantime I have been saving to a flash drive, running downstairs and printing that way.

I forgot to change the printer to PDF and printed out templates in the correct size. I didn’t get an error message and that surprised me, so I went to the printer and, lo and behold, there was a template printout waiting there! What luck.

Daring not to hope that this could work, I went back to my work table, hauled out the other templates I have been using and measured the corner template against the printout. Yippee! The size was perfect! I was in business.

I made the template and cut out a couple of the middle squares and sewed them to a couple of the corner pieces as a test. All worked perfectly!

Here are some Flowering Snowball blocks (Cross Block) in progress. Some of them you have seen before (many times?), but I put the new fragments with them to see how the piece can get away from the murky look. I felt it was a bit murky with the chocolate in the striped fabric and that particular orange.

I have lost the middle template for this block, which is holding up progress a bit. I looked at my EQ6 files and can’t find the project file, which means I have to recreate it somehow. I can cut most of the pieces and sew the corners to the middles, but at some point I have to deal with the loss of that template.

These are the fabrics from BatkisPlus and Quiltfabrics.com. I think that the batik on the right is the same one I used on Sharon’s quilt.

Here are Pineapple blocks 9 & 10. They are the first one using my new system of organzing the strips. I can’t really see much difference, except, perhaps, that these blocks are a bit darker. I think it was the way the strips fell. In the last rows I skipped over the dark blues and stuck with turquoise.