I guess I should have waited to cut everything until I saw the first clue so that I could adjust for this.
Monday I happened across a reel (don't love reels, but that is another story) on Instagram from Lo and Behold Stitchery about how to adjust your pieces slightly in order to give you enough room to trim. It looks something like this:
Cut your large square and your two smaller squares. Lay them out with a smidge of the big square showing.
Sew your seams, trim, and press. Add your next square, again leaving a smidge of the big square showing.
Sew seams, trim, and press, and you should have room left to trim and square up your block.
This did not work for me at all. First of all, because I used the wrong size big square to start with. Oops. That giant amount of overhang in the picture above should have been my fist clue something was amiss.
Then I tried again with the correct big square. I had a hair I could trim from the top, but my side was still too small by 1/16 to 1/8 inch as shown by the leftover dog ears after trimming.
Maybe her method will help you. For me, it's back to the drawing board.
Somebody remind me not to cut out next year's mystery ahead of time.
I thought I wasn't going to work so hard this past week, but I still did five quilts. I'm not really sure how I feel about that! I was planning to have all three days of the weekend off, but due to some things outside my control, I ended up with only Monday free.
Here are the quilts I did.
First, an IU baby quilt for Linda, quilted with Stipple.
Next, a fall quilt for Linda, quilted with Fall Foliage (free from Urban Elementz).
Ann's quilt, quilted with JK Celtic. I also attached the binding to the front.
Brenda's quilt, quilted with Van Gogh. This is her first time using a long arm quilter!
And finally, Amber's special memory quilt, quilted with Loopy Meander.
I have some really fun quilts scheduled for the rest of the week, but I have to say that my next week has many appointments and I'm also waiting for a spool of thread to arrive for one of the quilts. Every time I try to plan things out lately, things go really sideways. We'll see, and they are just quilts after all.
I was able to do a thread inventory over the weekend using the Glide thread list from Quilted Joy. It was not completely up to date, but it was close enough for what I needed. I put the list into plastic sleeves and thought I'd use a dry erase marker, but the marker did not stay on the sleeves. So I got out my last remaining Vis a Vis overhead marker from my teaching days. It only made a few marks before it died. It was over 20 years old. Luckily Office Depot had some in stock and since you have to buy a four-pack, I should now have a lifetime supply of Vis a Vis markers! 😅 It was nice to get the thread inventoried and organized so that I can see right away if I have the color I need.
Moving into the home and garden arena, we were surprised to find a zucchini in the pretty much abandoned vegetable garden. It had been there quite a while! We scraped out the seeds, which were about the size of pumpkin seeds, and it worked just fine as shredded zucchini.
And here are the chickens this week. They are getting pretty big and are outgrowing the tote we have them in. The coop is maybe 75% ready. We think the bigger black one that is most visible in this picture is a rooster. 
My daughter has been working with them to get them used to being handled. She sits under our strawberry garden netting frame and my husband hands them in to her. They usually run around in a clump and then start playing with the dead leaves. They are trying to fly a bit too.
The quilting on the quilts is very pretty, you do a good job selecting the right design for quilting. Children just love chicks! I usually don't participate in mystery quilts, the exception to the rule was participating in the Flower Patch SAL and I do like my flimsy. Happy stitching, I hope your week goes smoothly!
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