Barking..

When the quiltbug bites me, it bites hard. As I was happily quilting my evenings away, I suddenly realized that the Happy Joy quilt I was working on, could be finished in a few weeks. OMG! There would be nothing left to quilt then! I usually sew during the day when I have the time and don't like spending my evenings in my quiltroom too. I already imagined me, drumming my fingers in front of the tv, snapping at everyone.

I rushed to my PHD's (projects half done) to see on which one I made the most progress.

Ah, this one!
Middle part done, small innerborder half done.
Next step; add a dogtooth border.

I spent the entire afternoon struggling with dogteeth. According to the pattern you needed to eyeball a 1/4" seamallowance to stick out on either side of the cut triangle: the blue point in the pic and the red should both be 1/4"

Well, I eyeballed these so called dogears. I measured, fingerpressed a seam and pinned and had a 20% succesrate. So my seams were uneven and when I added the border to the quilt, I missed EVERY SINGLE point. GRRRRR!!!.

Then I made myself a latte, smoked 2 cigarettes (I know...) and saw the light!
What I did was adding a triangle, clip the dogears and added the next triangle. Wrong!
I just had to leave the dogears and use those as a measurement......

...making sure they were both the same height!

Then sew the 2 together.....

and flip the seam in the direction I wanted at the end

Tadaa

Perfection!!!!
Even seam allowances, no stress, no seamripping and a perfect dogstooth border!

For the experienced machine quilter this might be nothing special, for me it was a hallelujah moment :) Dog parts in quilts? Yes I can!