I was going to write this post yesterday, but I was – well, grumpy and it was all my own dang fault. Thursday I worked on the LeMoyne stars for the corners of the Lincoln block and Friday I attached them.

Doesn’t look too good, does it? Here is a side view of the block sitting on my ironing board.

What I realized was that I had used the wrong diamond template for the stars and they need to be redone. I use Marti Michell’s templates for the 6″ LeMoyne star in the setting triangle and grabbed the smallest diamond template from the set for the corner stars in the block. It is really close to the same size as the diamond template from the pattern, but – as you can see – not exact. So now I am grumpy because I will be removing all four stars, remaking them and sewing them back on. At least I know what happened with this block.
Before I left on vacation, I had mentioned that there were issues with the Rocky Mountain Bear Claw block. When all five pieces were sewn together, I had a small volcano. After removing the stitches, I used pins for the seam allowances to try and figure out what is going on. I have no clue!

Look at that gap. The only thing that I can think is that the center square is the wrong size. I need to check on Judy Niemeyer’s website and see if there are any corrections to the pattern, but I am just not in the mood to figure it out right now.
Since I was grumpy about these two sewing disasters, I did the only logical thing – started a new project.

This pattern is the Make It Mini Cartwheel from the August 2015 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. Each block is 6″ finished and I only need 6 for a small wallhanging (17 1/2″ x 23 1/2″). A quick and cheerful project is just what I needed. I think that I will have the top finished by tomorrow afternoon, then it will be back to the problem children.
I hope your week was better than mine.
Marlene