Sewing On An Empty Stomach

On this lovely sunny but blustery morning, I raced downstairs to my Quilt Cave as soon as I had read Bonnie's Step 5 of the Orca Bay mystery. I am very happy to also report that yesterday I DID finish pulling all the papers off the 128 red string triangles for Step 4. So they are done and I am working on the current step.

I found a couple of 2" black strips that I had been using for the stepping stones on a Bricks & Stepping Stones quilt last year and just decided to use them up. Geez, I need 700! Well, ya gotta start somewhere, right?

So I got about 120 cut out of the strips. But by this time, I was powerful hungry with no breakfast! Fortunately, Felix was upstairs in the kitchen rustling up some cheesy & sausage & egg omelet with English muffins.
I kept going and began to sew the little wing triangles onto the Half Square Triangles. But I had forgotten that for the paper foundations on the string blocks, my machine was set for about 17 stitches per inch, really close!
When I looked at the first two seams that I had stitched, I realized that the triangles were oriented the WRONG WAY!!!! Sigh. Then it was so tough to undo those close stitches.
Here is the wrong one before I undid it:

Then I reset my stitch length and laid out the pieces in front of me so that I couldn't goof it up again.

I got about 5 of the units completed and was very glad that they are measuring up correctly at 3 1/2" on the dogeared side. Then my hero, Felix called up to come upstairs for breakfast, and boy, howdy, I was ready!

Before I close this post, I'd like to pass along a little tip at Christmas time. Instead of placing my too-skinny-to-sew square-up strings in the petbed stuffing basket, I used them as a quaint-looking ribbon on packages. I love the homey touch that it gives, and the simple bow is easier to tie than curling ribbon.

Matthew & Raven are ready for their breakfasts, too!