Totally by accident, I didn’t repeat any fabrics for the first twenty-five blocks or so of this project (well, except for the red that’s used in every block, obviously). At that point, I felt like it would be fun to use each fabric in at least one block, with no repeats, before using any fabrics a second time. Fast forward almost two years, where I’d planned to use the last unused fabric on my first corner block.

But then I found this tan dot fabric – one of Paulette’s original fabrics that I was missing –  and once I had it, I wanted to be sure to incorporate it in the quilt.

I’d already made a block out of its replacement fabric, and didn’t especially want to redo that block. Since I wasn’t that enthused with the replacement fabric, I’d only planned to make one other block with it – a triangle block. I really wanted to have a square block made out of this newly-found fabric, so I looked through all the unfinished square blocks slated for tan fabrics.

One possible candidate was Block G12. I’d originally planned to make that block with Paulette’s printed palm leaf fabric, but I found it very difficult to work with the first time I used it, due to a weird faded wide stripe running through the fabric. So, I was quite happy for an excuse to never use it again.

Unfortunately, I felt like the new fabric was too small-scale to work well in Block G12, so I shuffled some fabrics around from other tan blocks and decided to use it on this octagon block instead.

I also thought it would be fun, after all the octagon-based blocks I’d been doing lately, to continue the party with this octagon-shaped pinwheel. Just like with the other octagon blocks, it offered plenty of inset seams to deal with. Good thing I’d had so much practice lately.

All the different approaches I’d seen for constructing this block started out with assembling the center octagon, so that’s where I started too. Like my other recent attempts at pinwheel blocks, there was a little hole in the center where the eight points didn’t quite come together after stitching. I’m still not sure of the best way to resolve that, so I ended up going back to the same technique of stitching across the hole from point to point, to cinch them all together.

Once the octagon was ready, I went to work on the pieces around the edge. After much debate, I opted to sew the pointy red triangles to two of the tan edge pieces, like this:

It was not an approach I’d seen anyone else take, but it worked very well for me. Once the pointy red triangles were attached, I sewed each of the top and bottom units to three sides of the octagon. These were basic inset seams, but with two changes of direction in each seam instead of one.

Then it was just a matter of sewing each of the two remaining edge pieces into the little niches on the sides of the block. Once again, each seam had two 150 degree turns, in order to attach three sides of the edge piece to the main block.

For as difficult as this block looked, it wasn’t all that complicated. Yes, there were those two-turn inset seams, but they were old hat after all the octagons I’ve sewn in the last month.

So, this was definitely the anticlimactic block: not as tricky to construct as I’d imagined, not an exciting block for my last non-used fabric, plus it would be hard to top the eleventh-hour dramatics of the crazypants block.

Still, there’s something to be said for ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill progress. I’m all in favor of less drama, more stitching. This octagon made for a good start towards my goal of 30 blocks in 2019.