Seeing spots

Over the weekend I finished off my Dotty Frames blocks for the next block swap, Saturday was spent selecting fabric and cutting all the squares and strips.  It didn't take too long although I did have a small problem with the instructions for cutting the strips.

The instructions said to cut across the width of the fabric and each strip would yield 4 or 5 rectangles (10" and 8" rectangles) per strip, which was fine, except I usually cut the selvedges off and once I had done that the width of fabric wasn't wide enough.  Luckily I only cut selvedges off the one strip, so the next strip I cut a 1/4" off the non-printed selvedge edge and then worked my way across - success.

Most of the strips had just enough fabric to cut the required amount of 10" rectangles, a couple had a small strip (less than 1/8") of white selvedge showing on a rectangle, but one strip had more than 1/4" showing, luckily I could use that for one of the 8" rectangles.  I had washed all my fabrics so there may have been a small amount of shrinkage but I do think that the instructions in the book should be more precise.

I even made a test block (the top block) to check that my seam allowances would be correct and I would end up with a 10" unfinished block.  All that remains is to package up the blocks and get them into the mail.