Why Must They Torture Us?

Yet another Harry Potter trailer.



Only 8 more months. Sigh...

Sewing Bee!

I had another sewing bee yesterday and finally added the last borders to my Four Square quilt. This sucker is huge. An 81" square. Once I moved the furniture to spread it out on the floor I couldn't get high enough to take a photo of the whole thing. Huge. I had to drop off my sewing machine to get repaired immediately after the bee. I did most of a Harry Potter block too. I'll finish it as soon as I can pick up my machine.

More Harry Potter Blocks

You can see all my completed blocks here.

Errol

I haven't done one of these Harry Potter blocks in a while. This block still needs to be pressed to keep the upper right corner from flipping up. The pattern for this block printed out smaller than the others. I didn't notice until I finished it. I'll add sashing eventually to make it match the others.

Owl Post

Pigwidgeon

I Had to P

You're Just Wild About Harry

There have been lots of questions about the Harry Potter blocks. So here's more information.

The block patterns are designed by Jennifer Ofenstein who has made a full Harry Potter quilt. They are available here for free. There is a LJ community that is testing the patterns. They are 5" blockas and are all paper pieced. Jennifer has just added a video of how this done to the pattern page if you're not familiar with it. It's the same method I used to make these blocks and these.

Here's my latest block.

All Work and No Sleep Makes Jess a Dull....Zzzzzzzzzzzz

I'm tired people. Not like just, "Gee, I'm kind of tired" but "Good Lord, I AM BONE TIRED!" Nearly too tired to complain about how tired I am. And it's all because I'm an idiot. I have let my "normal" bedtime slide from midnightish to 1ish to 2ish to 3ish. I've gotten steadily worse all summer long. Now I feel like I'm dying and still I stay up late.

I was watching TV last night (finished Rome--gonna miss that one--and started Dexter) and I was too freaking tired to knit. Wouldn't a normal person just go to bed? Not me!

And today when I got home from work I tried to make another Harry Potter block and screwed it up at least six different times before it dawned on me that I just couldn't do it because I am so tired. So I went to "rest" which resulted in sleeping for two hours like the dead. I now feel like I may very well still be asleep.

I fear this lack of sleep all summer has been bad for my knitting. I can't concentrate. I can't do much of anything. I realized this morning that I pretty much missed a full page of instructions on my Stashbuster Spirals. It's okay. The socks are still fine. Hopefully they'll be done in another day or two, if I can stay awake.

In the meantime my latest blocks.

Quill dipped in ink


Flying Snitch

Pottering Around

What started this morning as a passing interest in trying out a new quilt block ended with me near tears tonight. But I ended up with four new quilt blocks instead of just one.

It began with the wand.


Then the lightning.


Then Voldemort.


And finally a dementor.


These blocks have about eighty billion itty-bitty pieces. They're maddening. And yet so much fun. One trick I figured out after sewing and ripping multiple times (the rest of you probably already know this). When sewing two parts of the blocks together instead of lining up the edges or the corners I stuck a pin straight through the cross-section of the seam allowance in the corner to be seamed and went through the same cross-section of the second piece. I did this in both corners and it got my seams lined up really well.