It's Been a Sprint-a-thon...

...which is like doing a marathon-length's worth of sprints. Remember those Christmas quilts I wanted to have done? One for Pop-Pop, one for my mom, and one for my Mother-in-Law? Done. They're in the mail. I finished the binding on the last one the day it needed to be sent out, about an hour before the post office closed for taking Express Mail packages (haha). How's that for a last-minute cram session? And now, I guess there's no time for anything else but the big reveal...

This is Pop-Pop's Quilt. I entered it in the Project Modern Challenge 1, but it didn't win (obviously). To some extent, I'm a little peeved that I actually read the rules and regulations because I limited my description to 100 words like it said in the fine print, but none of the winners did. But that's all beside the point - I LOVE the quilt, and several guys who have been asked what it looked like to them have correctly identified it as looking like flying over farmland. My description of the quilt that I sent into the challenge was:

"My quilt captures the beauty of flying; my grandfather, my husband, and I are all pilots. My grandfather has just been moved to a nursing home, so I wanted a quilt to comfort him and remind him of the beauty he saw when he was flying. I chose a Disappearing 9-Patch design to capture the patchwork you see when looking down at farmland, forests, and peoples' yards. The quilting is simple to ensure that the overall pattern of interlocking fields of all different shapes really stands out. "For once you have tasted flight...there you will long to return." -DaVinci "

This was my inspiration photo - it was taken from Google Maps, somewhere over Kansas...go figure, right? This piece of land epitomized the "patchwork" of the land below very well. 

The second quilt I finished was my mom's quilt. The falling leaves quilt, full of brilliant fall colors and (I think) somewhat whimsical quilting.

The overall quilt - I love it. The lighter squares on the tree remind me of sunlight filtering through the leaves, and the leaves are just as random as I'd hoped for. They really look like they're all falling because of a stiff gust of wind. I really love this quilt!

A closeup of a few of my favorite leaves, showing off the quilting in the leaves. Each leaf's veins is totally different, which makes them even more perfect in my mind. I learned on this quilt that it's hard to quilt backwards one-handed on a curve (my machine's reverse lever requires one hand to push it). But I managed! More than a few of the leaves are actually made out of leafy fabric, which makes me all kinds of happy and giggly inside (which my husband thinks is a little crazy, but hey - I made it, I reserve the right to be happy and giggly inside). 

A closeup of the tree's hole. This picture was taken while draped on the couch, so the quilting is a bit more symmetrical than that. I'm glad that I didn't use a 100% black fabric for the hole - after all, you can usually see a bit of the wood farther back in a hollow in a tree. And I love that the quilting added depth. You can also see the quilting on the tree here too - freehand mostly vertical lines, spaced randomly apart. It mimics actual maple tree bark (the leaves are maple leaf blocks, so I stuck with that theme).

Closeup of one of the better areas of grass. The grass was interesting to try to sew, as it was totally free-hand with nothing to follow. At least with the veins on the leaves I had a general place I knew the line had to go. Not all of the grass looks this grassy, but this quilt was a huge learning point for me. I've never done anything like this, both piecing-wise and quilting-wise. You can see I chose a nice red for the binding (I'm almost out of this fabric, which makes me really sad...the selvage said "Kimono Collection" and it was purchased at Joann's about six years ago...it was red with gold butterflies on it) at my husband's suggestion. I usually get his opinion on bindings and he's usually spot on with his choices.

Finally, Texas Mom's quilt. I apologize for these pictures as they were taken with my husband's cell phone in the hallway of the post office prior to wrapping it up and sending the box to Texas. Fluorescent lighting + cell phone camera + door behind me that people came into, bringing the wind with them = blurry pictures. Hopefully by next week I'll have better pictures for you. The package didn't get there in time for Christmas (stupid Postal System!) and they left yesterday to go to New Mexico and Colorado so it will be there when they get back and I'll bribe one of my brothers-in-law to get some better non-blurry pictures of it.

Overall view of the quilt. It's a 4-Seasons quilt, so I wanted it to look like you were looking through a window. I tried to strip-piece the brown window-border, but realized that my seams weren't exactly straight, so my cuts weren't exactly straight so the outside edge doesn't line up with the squares in the quilt. I learned to let go and not care with this quilt...a valuable skill when I can't seem to sew a straight seam to save my life. At my husband's suggestion, I bound this quilt with white. It gives it a bit of a bright edge, and lightens up the neverending brown.

A blurry picture, but you can kind of see what's going on here. I tried to use the light blue squares to shade the snowman and snow on the ground. I quilted this section by outlining everything (top of the snow, outer edge of the tree, buttons and scarf, snowman parts). I quilted in the ditch on the background squares but also did diagonal lines both directions (/ and \) so in the corners of the background squares it made asterisks - kind of like quilted snowflakes! I echoed the tree's outline into the foliage about 1/4-1/2" apart. The blue squares in the sky have snowflakes on them too, but they're not as easy to see in this picture. The white and blue in the snow also have snowflakes. 

You might recognize some of these leaves - I quilted them just like on my mom's quilt. The pumpkins (which do have half-square triangle stems on top) are outlined and have pumpkin curves quilted into them. The stems have close-set lines to mimic how the stems look on real pumpkins.

This is the summer pane. It's a stylized sun, and I quilted the sun itself as echoes. I put out straight lines up, down, and left to right emanating from the sun, and I also did lines on the diagonal (you can see them bisecting the diagonal triangles). I then outlined each of the little triangles. I'm slightly peeved about this pane as I placed some of the triangles wrong, but if you didn't know what it was supposed to look like, hopefully it doesn't show...right?

Finally - the spring pane. The bluebonnets look slightly bluebonnet-ish, although I think they're a bit more wheat-ish. Regardless, I like them and the quilting does make them stand out from the background. I quilted them 1/4 inch apart following the V shape made by the way I pieced them. In the top diamond I echoed the diamond shape into itself. It was a lot of turning the quilt (most of these pieces were) but it worked. I quilted in the ditch for the green background squares to hold them down but nothing closer than that - I have found that if you want one part to stand out, quilt that area heavily and everything else loosely and it will truly stand out.

So there we go - my sprint-a-thon is finished and I'm free to not quilt if I don't feel like it. I'm trying to finish a few WIPs so hopefully I'll have some good news to report on that front! I have a baby quilt that's about 3 months overdue already, and it's hand-quilted (it was my work on the plane ride over here, and you really just can't mix hand-and machine-quilting on the same quilt, so lots more hand work to go!) so it'll take me a bit longer. I'm almost 3/4 done with the quilting, so hopefully by February at the latest...let's hope! My husband is holding me to the "finish Heather's baby quilt before starting anything new" thing so I guess I'd better get to work.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and here's to having a great new year!

Sorry, guys

I realize I've been silent for over a week now...sorry about that. I'm sewing like a madwoman to get these quilts done in time to ship to their recipients by Christmas! I have a picture of Pop-Pop's finished quilt, I'm in the middle (well, towards the end) of quilting Mom's Fall Leaf Quilt, and TX Mom's quilt top is pieced and ready for basting. I promise I'm working!

Oh, and I'm learning how to Free-Motion Quilt! Kind of by accident...I wanted to give the leaves on Mom's Quilt veins, which meant that I had to free-hand draw them. I've only done a bit of curves with the leaves (which are completely quilted now!) and drawing out blades of grass (some are more straight up-and-down zig-zags, but some look like grass! I only had one time where I had a tension issue, too...I switched thread from one brand to another and had to raise my top-thread tension about 1/4 of a value on my machine (2.5 to 2.75-ish). So hooray for that. I haven't ventured into stippling (it just looks like way too much turning the whole quilt sandwich for me...my machine has a really little throat and you get a workout every time you turn the quilt at all!) but hey - gotta start somewhere, right?

It's been great to have my husband home. Unfortunately, he woke up several times last night sick and hasn't been feeling well all day so boo on that. We did do some shopping and small travels earlier this Thanksgiving weekend - Christmas Markets opened this weekend and we hit up two, plus found me my dress for the ball in two weeks. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, eh? The dress fits pretty well (the arm-hole...yes, it's asymmetrical so there's only one...is a little tight but definitely looks great) and while the color is a bit out of my comfort zone (lavender) it goes great with a silver pair of heels I had left over from my sister's wedding a few years back. Add in a pair of silver long gloves we found at the same store, some jewelry I already had, and a touch of makeup - voila! I'm ready for my carriage to take me to the ball!

My hope (which seems fairly doable) is to have Mom's quilt to the point that it needs only hand-stitching (binding) by this weekend because I think we're going to be doing a bit of traveling. We'll see.

In other news, if you remember how I talked about my Grandfather being moved from Florida to Ohio to go into an assisted living facility...well, the lease on his old place was paid for a year after he left to give my dad time to go get it cleaned out. Apparently Pop-Pop didn't throw ANYTHING away. At all. My dad found 20 boxes full of pictures of my Grandfather from WWII, his wedding, etc. He also found more of my Grandmother's jewelry. I already have quite a few pieces of her jewelry from when she died while I was in high school. I love her jewelry and wear it a lot even if some of it is only costume jewelry. He also found some of her old quilting fabric, which my mom is going to send to me with her jewelry and some other things.

Now, I never really knew my Grandmother as an adult - I was in high school when she passed away, but she had Alzheimer's pretty badly before that. I knew her as a child, because she and Pop-Pop visited a few times and I stayed at their place in Florida for a few weeks one summer, but I didn't know her as an adult. It wasn't until very recently that I realized that she had quilted. I have two small quilts she had given me when I was a kid and when looking at them I realized she had hand-quilted them. They're hanging on the wall in my sewing room. I take after her (and her side of the family) more than any other of my family members physically - she was over 6' tall and had feet so big she had two pairs of custom-made dress shoes and wore men's shoes the rest of the time. I'm not that bad (5'10" and my feet are a mere size 11 womens) but even my face structure looks like her side of the family. I was born six days after her birthday too - another way I feel connected to her. I'm excited too because one of the pieces of jewelry I'm getting is an opal ring...we share that birthstone and the ring is real opals - a larger center one with smaller ones around it. My mom showed me on Skype and it's gorgeous!

Is it silly to feel so connected to someone I barely knew as an adult? And yet I do, because in a way I feel like I'm following in her footsteps. I'm a lot like her in a lot of ways...and I hope I become more like her because from what I can remember, she was an amazing woman. I can only hope to be more like my Grandma. And that's about the hokiest thing I've said all day. Oh well - such is life. Have you ever felt this way towards someone you only barely knew or who you didn't know at all?

I'm pretty sure you'll think I'm crazy, but...

To start off with, I've finished the bluebonnets for Texas Mom's quilt. Aren't they pretty? I haven't figured out how I want to quilt them yet but I still have a little time before that's an issue. I feel almost a little guilty because I've been invited to guest post on the Slow Poke Quilters blog but I feel not quite so slow this week. Oh well!
Now for my crazy side. I did something today that I haven't done in months: I threw away perfectly good food. It wasn't moldy and hadn't yet spoiled. But I dreaded eating it like the plague. It started its life innocently enough. Tuna casserole from scratch doesn't sound evil in the least. But I tried doing it without a recipe and that's where the casserole turned evil. I didn't make enough of the creamy sauce, or maybe I just used too much tuna or added too many vegetables. Whatever the reason, this casserole went the way of Darth Vader: it turned on its old teacher. But unlike Obi-Wan Kenobi, I was able to take its evil out with only a bit of a guilty conscience. The frugal side is throwing an all out hissy fit over the whole thing, but even she can't look a can of tuna in the eyes right now.
And so now that you probably think I've totally gone off the deep end, I'm going to sign off with the promise that the pan that once held the tuna casserole will, by the end of the weekend, hold something much yummier - my mother in law's cranberry date bars. I promise to use a recipe to make them too.

It's Been a While...

No, I'm not referring to the song by the same name by the band Staind. I'm talking about how long it's been since I last posted. I've been very busy at work, and for the next two weeks or so it'll be busy, but hopefully after that it will hopefully calm down a little bit. Well, it probably won't, but I can always hope, can't I?

On Thursday, I got the package I was waiting for in the mail. What did it contain? Well, it had 5 yards of this fabric:

That's "Journey's Beginning Brown Trees" by Wilmington Fabrics - t's the backing for Pop-Pop's quilt. Isn't it pretty? It's soft and subtle and just generally awesome. I'm excited that I'll have some of it left over for future projects. :) The package also contained three packs of Warm 'n Natural Batting, the twin size pieces. So I put aside the piecing of my mom's quilt top and got working on Pop-Pop's quilt. I started by ironing the backing, which I've never done before, but it made a world of difference in getting the fabric to lay flat and not be wrinkled on the back. I pieced the back for the first time using the masking tape method of holding the fabric down and stretched out. It worked kind of...my masking tape wasn't very sticky so a few pieces of it came up while I was pinning, but hey - it held it out flatter than it would have been otherwise. Once I basted it (I miraculously had enough pins! I put one pin in each of the big squares of the design, in alternating directions...if one pin was vertical, the next was horizontal, etc.), I had a brilliant idea. The kind of idea that makes a light bulb appear over your head...and break, because it can't handle the brilliance of your idea. Why don't I move my sewing machine and table out into the living room? My laptop hates playing DVDs, and I could just go play my movies on the TV and watch them that way. Plus, since my sewing table is usually against the wall, it would give me much more room for keeping my quilt away from the machine while quilting it! So I did just that. My sewing setup is in the living room, and I can enjoy my movies and work on this quilt simultaneously. Hooray for me. I am so smart...you'd think I would have figured this out sooner, but hey - late's better than never!

I did change my quilting plan. After a lot of consideration, and reading a lot of different blogs about quilting, I decided that instead of quilting in the ditch, which would draw attention to where my blocks don't line up exactly, I would echo quilt inside of each shape. I'm just using plain white thread, and I absolutely LOVE the effect it gives. It really accentuates the fact that each piece of the disappearing 9 patch block is separate, and that the "fields" of the quilt are all separate. Plus it makes a nice design on the back! I'm not quite halfway done with the quilting. I was hoping to get more done tonight, but I got a chance to talk to my mom tonight and I wouldn't have given it up for anything, even if it meant that I could have this quilt completely finished.

Don't get me wrong, this quilt is far from perfect! I'm not sure if any of my quilts will ever have the corners actually line up, or if I'll ever manage to do my anchoring stitches without ending up having sewn sideways and having it be perfectly obvious that I went back over that area...but I'm getting to the point where I'm not sure if I care that my quilts aren't perfect. I mean, I'll strive to make them well. I want my quilts to not fall apart in a few years or less...I'd love it if I could still see some of my old quilts from when I was just starting out quilting when I'm old and gray, and see that they've survived the years...the being dragged around the house, the spills that inevitably happen when babies are involved, etc. Sometimes I wonder if I really should care about getting my corners to match up exactly, and whether I should be bothered when my quilting isn't perfect. It seems like all of the quilts I see online that other women make are perfect. I can't see any flaws in them. But are they really there?

My mom (who used to sew all of my clothes when I was a kid...surprisingly, I still can wear a pair of shorts she made me...they were more like culottes back then and now they're the type of shorts that I'll only wear in the house when it's just my husband and I...but she made them I think when I was in 5th grade so I take that as a sign that I'm doing okay!) tells me that I shouldn't strive for perfection. There are cultures in this world that purposely ensure that any product they make isn't perfect. For instance, Persian rug makers used to intentionally mess up the pattern somewhere just so that they wouldn't insult Allah - since Allah (in their religion) was the only perfect thing in the universe, they would ensure that nothing they made was perfect. Maybe I should just say that I agree with that idea - God is the only perfect thing anywhere in the universe, so why would I want to make my quilts compete with Him? Haha, somehow I don't think that would fly. My wonderful mom has sent me pictures of quilts in magazines that have obvious flaws, where corners don't line up, etc. for me to look when I start feeling inadequate because my quilts aren't perfect. But it still kind of bugs me. Should I really care? I'm not sure. I'd love feedback. I love quilting, but I am afraid that if I were to pick out every seam that wasn't 100% perfect and straight, I'd hate it. Any thoughts?

On a lighter note, my dad found this blog. It's kind of a funny story how it happened. I had sent my mom the link to this post by Lynne at Patchery Menagerie. One of my mom's favorite words is Aubergine, and she absolutely loved the quilt that Lynne is making. Apparently she forwarded the link to my dad. Not thinking about my mom looking at the quilt, I left a comment on Lynne's post, offering up some of my scraps if she wanted them for her next few words. My dad checked out Lynne's post and saw that "Emma" (with my avatar, which he knows from my other blog) had posted a comment. He clicked on the link, and found the Quilting Hermit. Don't worry though - he read through it a little bit and saw that I was posting about making a quilt for my mom, so he did not send her the link to this site. He and I will keep it a secret until after I give her the quilt. Hi, daddy! It sure is a small internet, isn't it?

Anyways, on that note, I'm off to bed. I start work again tomorrow (hooray for 4-day weekends!) and I desperately need to get a workout in before heading to work. I've eaten entirely too much this weekend, thanks to sleepover movie nights, movie and a board game nights, and a farewell lunch for a friend. I hope your weekends were as productive as mine was! Tschüss!

My Weekly Challenge

I just posted this over at Prairie Moon Quilts, and for accountability, I'm posting it here. Shelly does a Weekly Challenge, where she posts a project that she'd like to get done, and then updates everyone on her progress the following week. I'm thinking that might be a good idea for me - that way I can hopefully get more done on all of my projects! So, without any further ado, here's what I told Shelly:

Hmmm…maybe I should try these Weekly Challenge things. Let’s see…for this coming week, I want to make progress on both my Mom’s quilt (I hope to get it done by Christmas, although I always bite off more than I can chew) and Heather’s baby quilt. Heather’s baby was due on the 10th of September, but as of the 21st hadn’t come yet. I haven’t heard if he’s here yet.

For quantifiable stuff…I want to finish both square #29′s quilting (almost there already) and #30 (it’s just one more square…a few hours…or a few movies! of time hand-quilting will get me there). On Mom’s quilt, I’d like to complete at least another 6 leaves. Granted, I may be able to accomplish both of these goals this weekend, but I’d rather get more done than my goals than less.

I wondered whether I had bitten off more than I could chew, so to speak, after I posted this. But then Saturday happened. On Saturday, I managed to round out the number of completed leaf blocks to 15, and by Sunday I had 20! Aren't they pretty?

The colors aren't quite right. I tried fixing them to no avail. The middle leaf on the bottom row is a bright tangerine, and the top row's second leaf from the left is a bright yellow gingham. The one that looks black is a beautiful not quite black burgundy color.

I finally figured out the secret to these blocks - a SCANT 1/4" seam. It's solved just about all of my problems. My other solutions were to mark lines for where I should sew on my HST blocks (instead of relying on what I think 1/4" looks like), and then...the stem blocks...if you're making stems for your leaves (which I think they look funny without), draw a diagonal line from corner to corner of both sky blocks. Line the sky piece up corner to corner with the stem fabric. Then don't sew on your line. Seriously. Sew between 1/16" and 1/8" outside of that line (towards the corner, so as to make the stem itself bigger). You'll probably have to trim off small slivers of sky fabric after you iron the block, but following that advice will make your life ten times easier at a minimum.

While I'm on the subject of those stem blocks, don't forget! You'll be cutting off a triangle of each fabric, so make it into a small HST! Here are my little guys (they're really little...the biggest one is 1 1/4"-ish...I free-hand the seam for these little ones so some are bigger, some are smaller, some are more rectangular, etc.). I think I'm going to foundation piece them (like making a string block...sew them down to a piece of muslin, so that they're strengthened as they're going to end up SUPER tiny) and use them in my back somewhere.

They're cute, and I think I like the zig zag pattern for them. Although I'm not sure how I'm going to fit in the leftover HST blocks from the leaves that don't have blue sky behind them (there are some on the grass or against the tree). I guess I'll figure it out! I just think those little guys are adorable, but I'm sure they're going to be absolutely awful to sew. Oh well, can't win them all!

Not much else has been going on...I've had to go in early and stay late both days this week, and I have to go in tomorrow but I shouldn't have to stay late. I hope. I do, however, have church band practice tomorrow night so I won't even be home until almost 9 most likely. Oh well...Friday is coming soon. And it's payday this week. And my husband will be home in about a month and a half!

As for the hand quilting, I have finished quilting block number 29 and have started 30. I'm about halfway done with 30, but I didn't touch it today. I watched a movie while eating dinner and had ample time to work on it, but my eyes were killing me (cleaning fumes at work from the bathrooms getting a thorough scouring) and I just didn't feel like working on it. That's strange for me...quilting usually calms me down, but tonight all I wanted to do was wrap myself up in a blanket and watch my movie. Which I did. In my defense, it was 69 in my house when I came home...and the heat was on. I'm still figuring out what settings I need to use on the radiators and heated floors to keep the house comfortable. While watching the movie, the house cooled down another degree, so I'm going to have to go turn the radiators up probably half a setting. I don't mind the house not feeling like an oven, but I want it to at least maintain 70 no matter what. When it gets colder (today got up to almost 50 in the afternoon, although it was drizzly), I'm going to have to warm the house even more! Yikes! My heating bill is going to be a bit higher than I'm used to (moving from the Southeastern USA to an area more northerly than the US/Canadian border will do that to you!). I foresee lots of nights curled up, hand quilting underneath my BIG hand-quilting project and drinking hot chocolate in my future. :)

What's YOUR favorite thing to do in the fall/winter?

Jenny is back!

We can all rejoice, for Jenny my Janome sewing machine is fixed! She can sew again! Total cost to me was about $35 (29 Euro), but I'm still not quite sure what exactly was wrong with her due to the language barrier between myself and the repairman (his daughter tried, but technical sewing machine words aren't part of her vocabulary). I tried just translating the bill, which had a description of services performed, but his handwriting was so terrible I couldn't figure out the spelling on a lot of the words. Of the few that I did figure out, there was "thread-way," "grabber (seriously!)," and "oiled." So based off of that (ha!), I can only imagine that there was something wrong with the way the grabber grabbed the thread from the thread-way, and he also cleaned and oiled my machine (one less thing for me to do!). It looks great, it runs like a charm, and I feel so much better.

The repair guy kind of reminds me of an old German version of my dad. He knew very little English, but he was very emphatic in telling me that my machine "was not the best" (seriously...over, and over, and over again) and that I should buy a new one from him (he's a Singer dealer). Then, as I was leaving, he was teasing me because I knock instead of ringing the doorbell. In my defense, there are two doorbell buttons, neither of which is labelled. A lot of houses/businesses around here have people living on the second floor, and since the doorbells are side by side instead of one above the other, I didn't know which to push. So I knocked. He followed me outside and rattled something off in German, pushing both doorbells to show me that both ring in their house, so I could use them. He then smiled, laughed, and walked inside. It was exactly like what my dad would do, but the random German would have been something sarcastic, just to make you blush, then laugh. Any quilters in my general area - let me know if you want his contact information, I'd love to pass it along!

I did a test run with her (of course!) and finished up the block that broke the machine. I then started another block but realized quickly why you shouldn't sew with a cold. I use the "sew both seams and cut apart into triangles" method of making half-square triangles, and I cut one set apart before sewing the second seam. Then I stitched my blocks together wrong on the first row. So I decided that it was time to call it quits for the night. But she works. My sewing machine is back.

In other news, my blog has been added to the blogroll over at Quilter Blogs! If you haven't seen the site, it's a great way to waste time I mean look at some amazing stuff from over 1250 quilters worldwide! It's a great site to look at when you only have a few minutes and want to see something quilty. It's what I do at work when I have some time off (like at lunch if it's raining outside).

As for the cold...I'm pretty sure that my head is going to explode. Or implode. I can't even tell if it's inward or outward pressure. I started having symptoms of my cold yesterday, and today it was all out. I woke up and swallowing was painful because of how swollen the glands in my throat were. My sinuses have been switching back and forth with which one feels like being stuffed and painful, but I've had sinus aches all over my face. You know, when you feel like your cheekbones are trying to explode out of your head and your teeth want to jump out of your mouth...yeah. Work was fun today. I've had tea twice today (it's a "Wellness" tea that has peppermint, berries, several different flowers, etc.) which has helped, and I've done saline gargles and nosewashes (I hate inhaling salt water but it helps the stuffed-up feeling in the sinuses). I am not going to take medicine...the side effects I get from even the most benign cold medicine are not worth it. Even those little tiny red sudafed pills make me extremely dehydrated, dizzy, and have a racing heart, while some of the more hardcore meds make me feel almost drunk. So please pray that I start feeling better! I'm heading to bed early tonight (it's almost 9) to hopefully feel better in the morning!

Have a great day/night/whatever time it is in your part of the world!

Sneak Peek!

This is what Pop-Pop's quilt will look like once I sew it together. I sewed together row 1 together, although I sewed the first half of it together wrong. The squares were all turned 90 degrees to the right, so it messed up the design big time. After ripping out the three seams, I turned the blocks 90 degrees back to the proper position, sewed them together the right way, and row 1 is sewn together. I'm glad that I took a picture of the layout, because I've used it to double check my sewing more than a few times now!