Vexed of Warwickshire

I am suffering from the downside of crafting hubris - it should surprise no-one but myself to learn that although I am a good knitter and a good cross-stitcher and a fair-to-middling freehand embroiderer ... I'm a bottom of the heap beginner quilter.

Week 5 of the Star Quilt-along was posted yesterday and I've spent the evening trying to get to grips with my triangles. This:


Is a vague interpretation of this week's star (see it lying there all sweet and innocent and starry - grrr, naughty star). Folks, this one is kicking me in the teeth. I spent ages carefully cutting out each square exactly and turning them into little exact triangles.

Then the original fabric I cut out for the darker blue looked all wrong so I re cut the blue I am using and in doing so swept half of the pieces onto the floor, including one little blue triangle that was never seen again, so I cut another one of those.

Then on the umpteenth rip out and do-over I did this:

See that little dark line? That's where I melted the thread onto the one triangle that was looking OK - clever eh?

So here's my question of the day to any quilters out there: When you piece a triangle to a square and the triangle hypotenuse is longer than the square's side, do you line it up like this:


or like this?


I just can't seem to make it all line up and the kicker is that this is the only block so far that is smaller than it should be and it's only going to get smaller the way the triangles are aligned. I solemnly declare here and now that this is NOT going into the final quilt. I can and will do it better.

I'm going to reassure myself that today's disaster is a result of a hot tired little brain that doesn't like the air pressure. H is away next weekend when I will sit down with next week's square, this square and a whole load of setting blocks and see what I can make out of it.

H came up while I was ripping out another seam and griping at the sewing machine and foolishly wondered why I was doing something I didn't like - surely it's obvious that this is my idea of fun!

PS I promise I have knitting to show soon, I've not defected entirely (well not just yet)