10.75 and counting

Progress is being made - YES!  Got all the half units sewn together and so now it is time to square up the blocks.  It is a rookie mistake not to do this....how do I know???  I do believe I have in the past 12 years made every mistake possible at the sewing machine and if I am lucky, I can figure a way out of it without throwing away either a lot of fabric or a lot of time.  One of the first quilts I fashioned was a small one out of some cute dog fabric I was given.  The idea was to hang it in my daughter's room.  I was going to attempt to make square in the square blocks.  I had done this before but all the piecework had been stitched by hand.  This was going to be my first attempt at machine stitched piecing.  Needless to say they did NOT come out uniform.  The frustration I went through sewing all these different size blocks into rows could have been avoided if only had had squared all them up first to the size of the smallest block.  The result, not do good.   It ended up being a cat mat for our cat Pumpkin.  She loved sleeping in the upholstered rocker and the upholstery on this rocker seemed to strip the fur right off of her so it was put to good use protecting the upholstery and Pumpkin didn't seem to mind at all.  We eventually had to find a new home for Pumpkin due to allergies but not only did Pumpkin come with her own carrying case, she came with her own quilt. 

I thought I would treat myself to a new blade on my cutter before trimming the 20 blocks to 10.75" but I soon discovered I was out of blades and the store is an hour round trip...not going to happen.  My sweet husband Tim gave me this gizmo in my Christmas stocking one year...a rotary blade sharpener.  Guess it was time to put it to the test.  One side is a bit more course that the other so I did my thing and sharpened it on the course side and then flipped it over to the finer grade to finish it off.  I wish I could say that I have a definitive answer for this (and I sincerely hope someone who has used this gizmo is the past reads this and gives their opinion in the comments but I'm not holding my breath) but I am not sure if it did indeed make the blade sharper!