Halfway done! I was afraid we might celebrate with the hardest block yet, but that paper pieced dress still holds that distinction. I pieced this one per the directions to see if I’m at better now with those 1″ pieces than I was when I started. The jury is still out.
The first thing I did was to pick out the fabrics. I wanted to have plenty of contrast but still use darker fabrics. Looking back, that lighter blue probably should have been replaced with a rose colored fabric. I don’t know if it’s obvious but it was wet when I took the photos and the diagonal line that I drew on the back was showing through.
I no sooner got all the 1.5″ squares cut when I remembered…I have a custom die with that on it. Argh. Too late. Out of 38 pieces, 20 were 1.5″ squares. With pieces that tiny, being off by 1/8″ ends up making a difference in the finished block.
By the end of lunch, I had the top picture finished. I laid out the pieces in the order I planned to sew them and went back to my day job.
Sometimes taking a break is a good idea, because when I looked at it again, it was obvious that I needed to make a change on what 2 colors were across from each other for the center square.
Is it just me, or is this block very nearly identical to a block we’ve already finished? The cut pieces seem almost the same but it’s amazing how just switching out the colors here and there made it into an entirely different block.
So there it is. I’m halfway through the blocks. I’ve been able to keep up fairly well but all that could change for the back half! My husband helped me take down all of the other 49 blocks so that I could try to lay them out dark, light, dark, light, etc.
The blue heart in the bottom left still isn’t blending in and if it doesn’t by the time we get to about 75 or so then I will probably do that one over. It was fun to pin them back up. Now I need to figure out a neutral color to use for the sashing…or perhaps a combination of fabrics?
In the meantime, my husband was at a store next to one of the LQS’s and he’s such a sweetie that he picked up some fabric I wanted so that I can begin to plan out a Christmas quilt. I’d like to have one or two quilts set aside for gifts for a special teacher if I can get them done. I have the fabric and pattern picked out for one, and the other is a panel piece that just needs to be basted and quilted.