What is up with my brain?!

Yesterday, during one of my semi-non-coherent stages, I had a prospective client come in. She wants to make her daughter a blanket for her bed, but isn't a sew-er. She wondered if I would be willing to do all the work for her. Of course, I said yes. She doesn't need it until the 29th, so this gives me a little extra time than if she needed it for Christmas.

She wants the blanket to be about 108 x 108 inches. This is a pretty good sized blanket. Initially she was thinking just use one kind of fabric for the top, and another for the bottom. Unfortunately, she didn't buy enough of this really cute ladybug fabric to use for the top. She was going to go back and see if she could find some more. We decided, though, that should they be sold out of the fabric, she would need dimensions in case she needed to add a border to the quilt.

Now, for some insanely ridiculous reason (this is the part where I swear I wasn't on drugs) I told her that she would only need 1 yard of fabric for her 12 inch border around the ladybug panel. Yeah, uh-huh. I promise I wasn't on drugs. I hadn't even taken a Sudafed yet! I honestly don't know what I was thinking! The finished quilt top will be 108 x 108, and at 45 inches wide, supposedly I only needed 1 yard (36 inches) of fabric. Yeah, maybe in a world where a yard of fabric is a lot longer than 36 inches!!

I gave her my insanely inaccurate measurements and she went back to the fabric store. She called me while she was there, asking how much she would need if the fabric was 60 inches wide instead. To this I replied "Oh, a half a yard." DUH! Again, I swear I wasn't on drugs. Still hadn't taken the Sudafed! A few minutes later, I realized that there was no way that was right. I called her back "Umm, yeah, I told you wrong. You need 3/4 a yard." We laughed, and she said she got a whole yard instead, just to be safe. Ummm......yeah, still not right.

Fortunately, she bought a whole bunch more of this really cute red fabric to use as the backing. Then, she decided that rather than have a solid border, she wanted blocks pieced into a border, alternating red and white. It was a really cute idea, and I was really excited to do this for her.

Well tonight I got started sewing. I sewed together the two pieces of ladybug fabric to make the main center panel. It's supposed to be 84 x 84, but after trimming off the selvages and squaring it up, it came out 80 x 80. Not a big deal, right? I'll just increase the block size from 12 to 14.....except that 14 doesn't go into 80 equally. So, mixed in with these 14 x 14 inch blocks, I have to have 2 - 12 x 14 inch blocks on each side of the quilt. No big deal, I can make this work. I have plenty of fabric. Right?

WRONG! I need about another yard of white fabric to make the pattern work. However, I do have a lot of green ladybugs leftover, so I'm hoping she will agree to throw that into the pattern. I think it would turn out really cute.

But yeah, so the point of this story is this: WHAT IS UP WITH MY BRAIN?! Is it just that I am so tired that I can't even do simple math now? Seriously, even multiplying 14 by 4 took much longer than it should have for me. Oh well, at least I have it all figured out.

Another funny story about simple math: Thought I needed 4 1/2 yards of minkee to back the t-shirt quilt. Yeah, not so much. I am going to have leftover minkee up the wazoo! The quilt is only 72 x 72. What was I thinking? I guess I was thinking that I needed 2 1/4 yard strips...two of them. Obviously, I didn't take into account that minkee is 60 inches wide. Yeah. Lots of leftovers.

Again, simple math. Maybe I am just meant to be able to do calculus (as I can recall clearly several fun parts of calculus, having permanently blocked out the nasty bits, courtsey of B/C AP Calculus/Physics block in high school), but I cannot do simple math to save my life!

Here's to hoping the rest of the weekend will help get my brain back on track. Any suggestions for easily doing simple math? Besides "just use a calculator", because that doesn't seem to work all that well?