Vanity

I've been idly wondering what vanity I'll carry with me to the Afterlife, and I think it'll be about my intelligence. It's useful, and plenty, and I'm proud of it.

Always have been.

 

Most of the time.

As the split 9-patch floral flimsy neared completion, I pulled out the 11.5" squares I'd cut last month in preparation for making this pattern:

I cut all the squares I'd allotted for this flimsy in half along the diagonal, cut the dark strips, and started sewing triangles to strips.

Halfway through my pile I couldn't wait any longer for the reveal, so I ironed and trimmed the first quarter of them, admiring them on the design wall.

Then it hit me. A Twin flimsy will fill that wall from (expanded) edge to edge, ceiling to bottom with the overflow on the ironing board. Yes, I still had 6 more to iron and trim . . .

. . . and half the triangles were yet to be sewn up . . .

. . . but even with all that, this was looking anemic, size-wise.

Why weren't things adding up? There were 48 blocks in the pattern: check. I had cut my fabrics into squares and those squares into 48 triangles: check.

 

And then I sewed them all back together into 24 squares, the same number of squares I'd started with. That little detail had eluded my reasoning for 7 weeks as this project percolated in the background.

Was I an idiot? Am I losing my rudimentary math skills? Was I particularly dim-witted the day I planned this out?

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a Winner!! (Pick one--I'm going with what's behind Door 3.)

Tell her what she's won, Johnny!

Well Bob, she's won the chance to go back and pull out all the extra squares she cut back in August, thinking they'd be the starting batch for a second Twin quilt. But that's not all she's won, Bob! She also gets to rootle around in her stash for additional unique floral fabrics so she can cut 8 more squares!

Which, amazingly considering I don't collect or use many florals, I managed to do. Here's where things stand now. The final 6 of the first half are sewn together and waiting to be ironed/trimmed. The second set of 48 triangles are stacked with their 24 dark strips, ready to be sewn back into 24 squares.

I guess my consolation prize in this little game of "Why Can't Carolyn Count?" is that there's no longer that second pile of 11.5" squares hanging around waiting to be made into a quilt someday!

Also, with all the sewing I've been doing lately, the tin of Lady of the Lake border triangle squares is emptying at a satisfying rate. Here's how it looked in January. (Today's status is shown in the triangles-on-the-table photo above.)

Several layers have been sewn into pairs, so many in fact that I'll need to take an accounting of them pretty soon and maybe start getting those blocks underway.

I'll probably count everything more than once.