Well dog gone! I mean "dog ears" gone!!!

I love my Chewie's ears! When he goes on alert his ears point straight up.  His head lifts as high as he can stretch it and his chest puffs out. He looks so proud and ready for anything... 

And I love rubbing those soft velvety triangles on top of his head. He leans his head into my hand and looks at me ever so adoringly with dreamy eyes and melts my heart.

 If you have a special attachment to dog ears, maybe you shouldn't read any further!!  I'm about to tell you something you may not know about quilters and the danger to dog ears.  ...

These are half square triangles.

In the past week I have made over 300 half square triangles. In truth, I only needed 160, but that's not part of this dark story...

When triangles are sewn together and pressed open there's this little piece of seam allowance that's extra.

Some time ago a quilter dubbed it a "dog ear."

I guess if you were to hold the square just right and use a little imagination, those triangles that stick out could remind you of cute floppy dog ears!

But in piecing a quilt top together, this extra fabric will cause bulk, which will cause distortion and make it difficult to line up seams perfectly and becomes a nightmare to quilt though.

So now we have unwanted "dog ears."

And the sweet quilter you know, fervently and unapologetically takes her sharp shears and snips all those dog ears off!!

Here's a portion of a day's work.

"Dog ears" swept into the waste bin.

Such a gruesome tale, huh? And yet, quilters continue to do this activity daily with no remorse!  Not quite as sweet as you thought, huh?!!

Speaking of fervently. I have been testing a pattern written by my friend Karen Arzamendi. It's called "Tree of Life"and features dimensional embellishments. You can see a picture of her quilt Here in the class info at Stitch-N-Frame quilt shop in Vicksburg, MS.

The flowers are made with fabric yo-yos, ruching, fabric folding, and ribbon techniques.

Since Karen is teaching a class this week, I self imposed the date as my deadline.

The pattern is written with the thought that it could be a take along project as hand work. I started on Feb 21 choosing fusible/raw edge applique because of the need to put this together quickly.

Fusible applique is not my favorite technique but once the blocks started coming together it's not difficult to continue!!

At this point I have most of the applique in the center done. I will tell you I am in love with all the dimensional techniques used for the flowers! I want to make more. I still have to add the embroidery stitches and embellishments,  but since I'm testing the pattern I decided it's best to move on to the borders.

The first border is a very thin 1/4" finished strip.  Honestly, it was a tiny bit intimidating for me. I was nervous about keeping the seam to exactly 1/4".  I needn't have worried. It worked perfectly and I didn't have to unstitch any!!

I loved the Flying Geese in the second border. The yellow background brightened the top. And the little tip about how to make the border fit is ingenious!!

Karen's pattern has more flowers for the corner squares. My signature shape on all my quilts is a heart. So I decided the corners would be the  perfect spot for my hearts.

Moving on to the next borders.  I love red, yellow and purple together. So for the fourth border I was certain that I wanted dark purple for the background color of the PinWheel blocks. This is where the half square triangles come in. I made 160 units with the dark purple for the background. Then started setting them up on the design wall to see how they look with the quilt....

I arranged with scrappy in mind.

I was not all that thrilled...

 

But determined to have that purple, I rearranged the squares to not be so scrappy.

It still wasn't working for me...

I tried only similar colors like the bright pinks and oranges....

Ya, not happy. It actually hurts my eyes! And I'm suspecting what the problem is, but refusing to give in to it.

Ok! Only blues and greens must be the answer!!

Nope. Still makes my feel blah and my heart is starting to sink. Because in just two days, Karen is going to teach her class and I want her to have my top to show a different color option to her students.

None of the arrangements gave me that "YES" feeling.

I decided to consult my artist Sweetling. In my heart I already knew I was going to have to remake all squares but need it confirmed.  I kept a sliver of hope the purple wasn't the offending culprit.

And wouldn't you know... I didn't give her my opinions and just let her look at the pictures. The very first thing she said, "the purple isn't working." She had more explain as to why, and it was exactly what I already knew, but hearing it from someone else gave me nudge I needed to move on and start over.

The next 5 hours was a mad dash to make 40 new Pinwheels (160 half square triangles) with yellow backgrounds. This time I made just a few first. It only took 3 pinwheel blocks on the design board and I was "YES YES YES!!!" 

Lol, even if I wasn't trying to complete this border before handing it over to Karen the next day, I wouldn't have been able to stop working on it until it was done. 

I forgot to get a pic after this.. but don't those bright crazy colors make you feel happy!!!

BTW, from the moment the first leaves were appliqued on, I knew who would be receiving this quilt. And I believe I have a title for it too, but can't tell you yet because that would give away the recipient.  With this knowledge, working on this quilt top is that much sweeter for me. 

My quilter soul sings joyously as each piece is added on.