I put these four blocks together in a set because they all featured 1/4″ wide red strips (“the sticks”) in the design, so I figured I’d get plenty of practice at that particular technique.

The downside of this approach is that I’m super sick of stitching these tiny little strips now. The third block (the one with 16 squares surrounded by strips) was a particularly slow grind. The beauty of a sampler quilt is that there is a lot of variety to keep me from being bored, but then I went and undermined that by spending a month doing the same thing over and over again.

One challenging aspect of these stick-based blocks that kept things interesting for me was the seam allowance. That’s the extra bit of fabric that sticks out beyond your stitching line on the back of the block. For quilting, this seam allowance generally sticks out 1/4″ beyond the stitching line, and then you press it flat to one side or the other of the stitching line.

These blocks were particularly tricky because those red strips were only 1/4″ wide, and had 1/4″ of seam allowance on either side of that, so there was a potential for overlapping seam allowances and a very bulky block. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up with seven layers of fabric in places.

It was like doing a puzzle, trying to figure out the best direction to press all the seam allowances to minimize the thickness of all areas of the block. Even with careful planning, that third block is going to be a bear to hand quilt when the time comes, stitching through all those layers of seam allowance.

The other stick blocks weren’t quite as “concentrated” as that one, but each presented their own problems. On the block with the cream and pink background, for example, I had to press the seam allowance towards the bigger cream squares to reduce bulk, but now I’m concerned that the red seam allowance will show through the cream fabric when the quilt is finished.

I do love how each block in this quilt is its own little test of the quilter’s ingenuity. It’s slow going sometimes, but it’s rarely boring.

You may remember that as of my last post, I was ecstatic about the progress I’d made at my guild’s quilting retreat, finishing two of the four blocks in a single day. I figured I’d finish the four blocks in this set in no time, and be posting this blog entry within a week.

Unfortunately, real life intruded once I got back from retreat. The third block took me over three weeks to complete (granted, it had a lot of pieces), and the fourth took me a solid week. It’s disappointing compared to the pace for the first two blocks, but I’m still well ahead of my average of 2.3 blocks per month.

The first block for this project was completed a year ago today. I look at my progress thus far in the context of the whole quilt, and it doesn’t seem like much. It’s far more satisfying to look at the fat stack of completed blocks – it’s almost an inch and a half thick now.

The #1 lesson I’m taking away from this first year of the project is that I need to make my own quilting retreats, not limiting myself to the official quilt guild retreats twice a year. If I keep waiting until things settle down in my life before I sit down to quilt, I won’t make any progress at all.

Oh, and lesson #2: don’t do four blocks in a row that all have the same aggravating piece shape …