What’s wrong with this finished picture?  Or put another way – theoretically…if I person accidentally made a rotated image of the pattern, is it still the same pattern or is it a new one?

My apologies to the wonderful designer, the very talented Sarah Maxwell.  I had this bright idea that I would paper piece today’s block so I could get those nice crisp points.  It’s nice and pointy but if you look at her design, mine is just….well, it doesn’t look like the pattern.

I took page 2 which is an outline of the finished block and then I cut it into 4 quadrants and numbered each piece.  Then I numbered a couple of them again where I obviously got it wrong – work from the inside out is the first rule of paper piecing.  Then I picked out the fabrics I wanted to use and thought to myself “this is gonna be a breeze!”  I could see the triangles all needed 2″ squares so I took a couple of charm packs and cut them into fourths for some wiggle room.  The big pieces needed to be cut 2×4″ so at least the cutting portion went super fast.

I chain pieced each block as I went along and as an added bonus, I even trimmed my threads regularly.  I don’t know what it is about paper piecing but I tend it ignore that and end up with a mess of threads.  But not today – I was on a roll!

This was going to be perfect!  Famous last words of a fool.  I got to about this point in the steps where I had sewn half of each quadrant when my sister called.  She takes my mom out for frozen custard once a week and we get to have some 1:1 time on the phone which is always a big treat for me.  By then the lunch hour was over because I sure can’t run a sewing machine and talk on the phone at the same time.

I took a quick break in the afternoon and as I flipped all the pieces over to sew them together, I said hmm.  Then I said hmmmm…..  And then I said HMMMMM….  And finally finished it up with a great big HUMPH!  There was no fixing this!  It was just going to be have to done over from the start or it was going to have to be a block I shall now refer to as “Twisted Twirl Time”.  Yes, I gave it my own name and called it a day.

I still like it though!  And I really like the original block too – too bad I didn’t make that one!