How does this happen?

My “bird project” is supposed to be something I’ll work on during sewing days sponsored by my guild. Somehow, though, I just couldn’t resist making the third in the series at home a few days ago — and it’s a very good thing I did! The designs are paper pieced, so I printed this one out on the same kind of paper as the other two, using the same printer and the same computer to print from. And I made an adorable little robin! Did I say “little”? Somehow I ended up with a 9″ block instead of the 12″ one I’d planned! I couldn’t believe it. I printed out the foundations several more times, making sure that I had no scaling selected and that everything else was as it should be, but all of the foundations were coming out too small — including the little line that prints on the pattern for double-checking size (and which I should have checked before doing the block). I have no idea what happened, but I was both puzzled and frustrated.

Then I started playing with scaling the design, printing out samples until I ended up with the right size. I had to increase it by 137%! But now I have *two* cute little robins, one of which is the right size. Thank goodness I didn’t discover this at a sewing day, as I’d have had no way to redo the printing. All’s well that ends well! 🙂