I call this one the skill-built block because it draws on so many skills learned on previous blocks. You may recognize the square surrounded by a border from The 10 Percent Block, and the tiny almond shapes from The Melons.

I’ve also done a few blocks with triangles, although nothing quite like this, where the points of the triangles have to match up with the edge of other pieces. You may notice that one of my triangle points is slightly cut off. It’s driving me crazy, but I’m making a concerted effort to be less perfectionist here, so I’m trying to resist the urge to rip it out and redo it.

Also, I’m trying not to waste fabric by redoing pieces, especially where the fabric is in short supply.

The green fabric for this block is kind of noteworthy. You may recall that I got the fabric for this quilt third-hand from Paulette, but not all of the fabrics she had originally intended to use were included in the box I received.

I put the word out about the missing fabrics, but without any real hope of finding any of them. After all, Paulette had purchased her fabrics for this quilt 15+ years ago.

But lo and behold, my friend Becca actually had one of the exact fabrics I was missing … the green stripe with flowers that you see here in this block.

Since the fabric had a diagonal stripe, I had to be very careful cutting out the pieces, so all the stripes were going the direction I’d planned. Instead of just having them all go the same direction (boring!), I decided to have the stripes for each quadrant of the block travel from the center to the outside corner. I feel like it gives it a little more visual interest.

Unfortunately, when I went to cut out the pieces, I found that the stripes on the fabric weren’t completely diagonal (meaning, they weren’t running at a 45 degree angle to the edge of the fabric).

This was going to ruin all my best-laid stripe placement plans, and I couldn’t let that happen. So, I ended up cutting out the pieces slightly off the grain line, so the stripes would run at a 45 degree angle. Because of this rebel fabric-cutting move, I was nervous that the fabric would stretch out of shape and not lie flat, but it behaved better than expected.

In general, this block went together pretty easily, thanks to the skills built on other blocks. Who knows, maybe one day an advanced skill level block will even seem doable. So far I’ve only done beginner and a few intermediate level blocks. I’ve got to build up those skills before I tackle the really difficult ones.