I decided to go out of order again with the Splendid Sampler blocks, skipping temporarily past blocks 55 and 56 which are both applique and going straight for block 57.

I actually really like the last two blocks and I’ll get them knocked out here before too long but one thing I know about myself is patchwork is probably my favorite followed by paper piecing for the most part!  There was one block that gave me a run for my money….

I like the way applique looks and I enjoy the sewing part of it.  I liked cutting out the applique for the Bloom quilt which had larger blocks but some of those tiny pieces for these 6 inch blocks just make me take a pause before I work on them.

I have a custom die for Patchwork of the Crosses that includes a 1.5″ square so I used that to cut the twelve small squares for this block.  That way at least I had a good running start to this coming out somewhat close to the expected finished size.

This was truly a sampler block.  I went to the bin that holds all my fabrics for the sampler and looked specifically for two very dark fabrics and two medium fabrics that also were already cut up. As you can see from the first photo to the second, I played around with the layout until I finally got it the way I wanted it to look.

It’s an optical illusion – because of the print in the inner squares, it looks like the dark red/light grey  4 patch isn’t squared.  I squared up after every seam I sewed and it actually is square even if it looks wonky in the photo.

I’m not hanging these very straight on the design wall overall though – can you tell I’m not an engineer by trade?  That non-straight line might be driving some people a little nuts – haha! Sorry ’bout that.

I finished another block for the purple star quilt yesterday but otherwise didn’t get much done on it due to other activities planned this weekend. As life goes, the last 4 days have been pretty awesome, and I hope the same can be said at your house!