Handwork During Work

Like just about anything else these days, work related conferences have been canceled. They’re holding virtual conference instead, and that means that I spent nearly the entire day today watching presentations over the internet.

So I had prepared some handwork that I could do while listening. I decided that going over my crumb blocks and removing and clipping any stray threads was a good thing to do.

I got through all 63 blocks in less than an hour. I was surprised that most of the threads on the blocks were actually loose. I probably only had to clip one or two threads on each block.

As I was looking closely at each block I discovered issues that mean I’m going to have to make a couple of additional blocks.

The first one was this block where I discovered a little wedge that was cut out of a tiny piece of fabric. If I hadn’t caught this it would have become a huge problem and more difficult to fix once the quilt was done.

The second one was this block where I just didn’t leave enough seam allowance when sewing two small pieces together. The hole is only about 1/4 inch wide, but it will become a bigger problem with wear. So this block will be replaced as well.

I’ll probably just cut up these two blocks and sew them back together with some left over crumb pieces I have on hand, rather than piecing two entire blocks.I wouldn’t want to use these blocks in any other project. Safer to just cut them up.

There are probably other errors like this throughout these blocks. I hope I’ve caught them all, but there are almost 2,500 little pieces of fabric in this quilt. Chances are there is something I missed.

Here’s the pile of thread I removed from these blocks.