I’ve just about used up my first chunk of red fabric. Here are all the scraps I have left of that initial piece:

The problem is, I can’t remember how big that piece of red fabric was to begin with. According to the software, I should have used up 2 3/4 yards of red on the blocks I’ve made so far. I’ve been trying to remember if that first piece of fabric was a 2-yard piece or a 3-yard piece.

Either way, I’m not outrageously far off, but I still have less than the software calls for to finish the quilt, so I’m sure hoping it was a 2-yard piece. I really should know myself better, and write these things down. How am I supposed to remember the size of a piece of fabric for two years?

Fun fact: when I sat down to write this blog article, I typed in that the new piece of red fabric I was starting on was definitely 2 yards, so I’d be able to see if I was on track with fabric usage once I finished that chunk of fabric. As I continued writing, I took a look at my notecard with blog ideas for this block … and I had clearly written down that I’d cut off a 1-yard piece. I can’t even remember the size of a piece of fabric for two weeks!

So, I’m making a note, here and now, for all my readers to see: on August 25, 2018, I cut a 1-yard piece of red fabric, and started using that 1-yard piece to cut out the red background square for this block.

As promised in my last post, I chose a block with fall colors and shapes to encourage the weather to cool down. After I chose it, I noticed the name of the block was “Viewer’s Choice” … how appropriate!

The original block shows the center flower shape cut into four quarters, but I didn’t really see the point of that … I was using a relatively large print and I didn’t want it to look all chopped up at the seams. So, I redrew the pattern to make the flower shape all one piece:

You can see that I cut off the seam allowance on the “insides” of the original pattern piece (because I was eliminating those seams in the middle of the flower), and then traced four of those shapes next to each other. It was embarrassingly more difficult to do than it looked, and took quite a few tries to get everything to line up properly.

Once I had my pattern pieces, I cut out the flower and four leaves, and started appliquéing the flower in place. The inside points were a little tricky to do, but I think it came out looking pretty good.

I wrapped up the flower shape while I was out of town, and reached into my travel kit for a leaf piece to appliqué … but there were no leaf pieces to be found. I tore through all my luggage … no leaves. I’m pretty sure all four of them are sitting sad and lonely on the floor of the waiting room in my doctor’s office.

Luckily, I’d brought a little bit of the dark green fabric with me, and was able to cut out four new leaves. This time, I pinned those suckers down so they couldn’t escape again:

The good news is, the missing pieces were all green: no red fabric was wasted in the making of this block. Here’s hoping I have enough of it to finish the whole quilt!