I was thinking this afternoon as I finished this up I didn’t know why it took me so long to finish this block.  But then I remembered that I was busy quilting 3 tops with my Avante when this one came out so I put it off on purpose.

I cut each of the pieces with the 1/4″ seam and then ironed freezer paper to each piece to cut out the templates and then cut out the fabric for each one.  After that, I cut each template down to the sewing line.  After I had all the fabric glue basted to the templates, I was ready to start.  I started with the star points that attach to the 8 sides of the octagon first, and that’s probably pretty obvious since I have some huge stitches there!

We were headed to and from a football game while I was sewing on this.  It was dark on the ride home and why on earth I thought I could sew with just the light from my iPad…I have no idea.  So there are a couple of points on there that just aren’t quite a perfect match but overall I was pretty happy with where it ended up.  85 6″ blocks – at this point, if it’s finished…I’m happy! And we won the game – not that you’d know it from my camera skills while I was jumping up and down and high five-ing everyone around me.

I finally remembered that I hadn’t cleaned out the lint under the needle plate since I finished up the Libs Elliott quilt and I’m here to give a first-hand report that flannel puts out a whole lotta lint!  I’m guessing that’s not a newsflash to anyone but here’s the proof.

There were some of the biggest single clumps in there that I think I’ve ever seen.  The weird thing that I’ve never been able to figure out is no matter what color of fabric or thread I’m sewing with, it always looks pink in that area where the feed dogs are.  The rest is always greyish, but that one area always seems to be pink.  Weird!

I wanted to make sure that the snail’s trail block was going to look like I imagined it to be so I did sew one block this evening.  There are 2 common ways to make this block.  The first is paper piecing and that’s probably the easiest way but it also has the downside that unless you want to tape a whole bunch of paper together, you’re limited to about an 8″ block.

The other way is called “square in a square” and it’s traditional piecing.  Since I have the Accuquilt die for this, that’s the way I’m sewing it.  It cuts the notches perfectly so it’s easy to see how to line it up.  It starts off with a 4-patch and then the rest is half square triangles; 16 of them in fact.  It could be very easy to stretch this out of shape since it’s on the bias so slow and careful sewing is the way to go on this.  I’m in no hurry to get much done on this for now since it’s not going anywhere until I think April or May.