Geta Grama is a favorite designer of mine and I’ve been looking forward to her block for months.  I knew it would be a challenge, and she didn’t disappoint.  It might be applique, but as usual she kicked it up a notch.  First, it has 17 pieces in a 6″ block, but it’s how the pieces fit together to make a secondary pattern that really makes this block pop.

I knew when I saw it that I wanted a dark background with light petals.  This fabric has a larger print on it so I’ve been trying to find a way to fit it in since most of the blocks have small pieces and makes this particular fabric a challenge to include.

I ironed Heat ‘n Bond to the back of the off white fabric then traced the pieces on here.  If you are doing the Splendid Sampler and haven’t completed this block yet, may I make a suggestion?  Iron the Heat ‘n Bond on a piece of fabric that’s 8.5″ x 11″, give or take.  Then run the fabric with the Heat ‘n Bond applied through your printer and print the pattern (I think it’s page 2) directly on to the fabric.  This means you don’t have to trace which saves time, but otherwise you’ll have to trace twice which decreases accuracy.  Some of my points are a little off, but if I had printed it directly on to the Heat ‘n Bond, that would’ve eliminated that.  Think of how paper piecing gets you to those very precise points…same concept.

This was about the time I received the opportunity of a lifetime.  Did I want to go hunting for Pokemons in 98 degree weather in the middle of the afternoon?  Well of course!  Who doesn’t want to melt into a puddle, walking around for an hour, watching scads of people chasing imaginary characters on their phones.  I meandered over to the butterfly garden to check it out in the meantime.

We were out there for an hour, maybe two and finally made our way back home.  Let’s pause and give thanks to the person who invented air conditioning!  My sewing room gets hot, but it’s still a lot cooler than Texas in the summer.

I started the task of laying out the individual pieces and trying to make them fit together correctly.  I finally got it as close as I could and very carefully carried the block with the pieces over to the ironing board and then pressed them into place.  Then I sewed a blanket stitch around each piece, connecting as I went along to fill in some of the spots where I thought there was a bit of a whole.  Not quite symmetrical when I finally looked at the finished product.  Oh well!

This was a fun block and I’m amazed again at the creativity of the designer who came up with this.

In other exciting news, I was perusing the Instagram page of a LQS and saw a picture of a La Passacaglia rosette next to a book.  They had both Millefiori books in stock!  When did that happen?  Seems another customer asked if they could order the books so they bought several.  I needed some backing fabric for a quilt I’m making so I picked them up while I was there.  It will be a long time before I start anything out of there because I’m determined to finish Patchwork of the Crosses first, but those books can be really hard to find so I bought them when I had the opportunity.  The directions in them are very clear and written in both French and English.