Overly analytical, that's me!

It takes a special gift to be presented with an easy task and make it hard. I am starting to work on the teacup block swap and got all the saucers cut out and pressed yesterday evening. Today as I was packing up everything I would need to work on it at Mom's house, I thought I would take the templates and create a scale drawing to make placement on the background faster and easier.

Off I go for the graph paper to mark out a 10 1/2" square and dash in the stitching line for the finished block size. Then, using the cardboard circle that was my pressing template, I draw in the saucer size. Something looks a little wonky to me, but I continue. I add the inner circle on the saucer, the little plate stand triangles, and then choose a cup pattern to judge where the base should fall with respect to the saucer. When the sketch made to scale is complete, I stand back and realize that the applique pieces look WAAAAY bigger than those in the illustration of the block. In fact, they're almost covering the whole background.

OK, now here's where I get overly analytical. I get my ruler and measure the block illustration border and the saucer diameter. Sure enough, if the illustration is to scale, the saucer should be 7 1/4" in diameter. Mine is 8 1/4". Brain promptly goes into overdrive.

I have already had a situation where I had to juggle the scale of one of the Hearts A Flutter patterns printed by Adobe Acrobat because it wasn't coming out the proper size. I don't know if that's what's going on or if the pattern is too large - at which end does the problem lie?

At this point I should add that - she's a pattern designer, for crying out loud, she knows what she's doing and I know she knows what she's doing but the button has already been pushed and I have questions, so I can't stop now. So I shoot off an email to the designer Sindy Rodenmayer, and one to a blogger who had written about making these blocks (you know who you are and thanks for answering my question, but wasn't sure I should cite you without permission). Turns out, the blogger was making the blocks but for a friend, not for the swap, and had adjusted the saucer size because she thought it looked too big also.

Now, I'm worrying. Will I have to trim and press all those darned circles again for all twelve blocks? Rats. An evening's work down the tubes. Since it's a block swap, and I'm a neophyte at it, I want to be sure I'm doing them right.

Sindy answers my email today (thanks again) and reassures me that she drew up the illustration quickly for us to work from and it's not to scale, so the saucers are right and should fill up most of the block. She modified the block drawing to scale, so anyone who has the same question can go here and see the changes in the illustration.

In other words, I went off on a tangent for nothing.

Chicken Little here, glad I could help!