Circle of Friends - October 2015 BOM

Circle of Friends is a great name for a quilt block. I like this block a lot. I like the colors (but I was a little surprised to see a NEW color, magenta, in month 10). I love the bright star in the center. I love the way the outer stars interlock, like a circle of friends holding hands.

This BOM was a little bit harder than some. I had trouble with the outer strips. When you cut the rhombus, you start out with a rectangle, and then you cut the corner off. It's hard to get it just right when you cut and when you sew the triangles onto the missing corners. The result is a new rectangle, but when you sew the rectangles together, they don't always align well. I re-did some of these pieces 3 times. Rip, rip, rip.

The second problem I had was with the directional print. I thought I had addressed making sure the print squares were all facing the same direction before I sewed the pieces together. It turns out that there are two ways to make the four-patch, and the direction of the print matters. Because the block instructions are planned so that seams alternate nicely, I didn't want to mess with things, so . . . rip, rip, rip.

The third problem was a tension problem. I had been using the machine to repair some t-shirts, and somehow the tension was a little different when I went back to quilting. I didn't figure this out right away. When I noticed the white stitches peeking through, I was not in the proper frame of mind to undo and redo a lot of work.

I am, however, very pleased with how the corners and points turned out.

Lessons learned:

• Don't just think about the layout. Do an actual layout beforehand, following the instructions.
• When you cut off a corner to make a rhombus, try stacking.
• If you use the machine for something else, test the tension before resuming quilting.