I’m just past the 1/3 mark of the 225 blocks in this quilt, so it seemed like an excellent time to tackle my first corner block. I know, one block before the 1/4 point would have been a far more logical time. I’m not sure I was really ready at the 1/4 mark, but I’m ready now.

I chose this particular corner because it was similar to my previous block, with lots of inset seams joining together a bunch of octagons. It’s definitely one of the simpler corner blocks, but my friend Becca still dubbed the block “crazypants” when she first saw it (apparently it’s the lone octagon in the point that makes it so crazy).

One of the craziest aspects of this block for me is that there were no rotary cutting instructions for any of its pieces. Every last piece was an oddball size (think 1/16″ measurements), so I had to use templates to cut everything out, even the perfectly ordinary squares and triangles. Okay, I cheated and rotary cut the squares, but I traced around templates for everything else.

I also learned from the previous block and trimmed the right-angle points on both the triangles and the squares. This made that center section with the nine octagons go together more easily. After all the practice on the last block, I was an expert at octagon stitching.

With more octagons and more seams, this block was more of a puzzle to figure out which seams to sew when. Here’s my first seam, which joined three octagons and two squares:

I wanted to minimize the number of times I had to tie off the thread and start again in a new spot, so I worked my way through the pieces like a maze. After my second seam, I had five octagons and three squares attached:

I continued adding octagons until all nine were attached. The tricky part was keeping them in the order and orientation I’d planned. The fabric had mostly red triangles with a handful of pink triangles printed on it. I cut the octagon shapes so that the center one had three red triangles, and the others all had one pink and two red triangles. Then I arranged them so there was a “ring” of 8 pink triangles around the center octagon, and another “ring” of 16 red triangles around the pink ring. I’m pleased with the final effect:

Then I added the red triangle pieces around the edge to turn it into a square:

To make my first corner block less daunting, I tried to think of it as a square block with a really oddly-shaped border around the edges. It really does look scarier than it is, which is probably what made me procrastinate so long on starting it.

I had set a quilting goal to try making my first corner block in 2018, and by the time I started this block, I had only a week to complete it – for me, that is definitely a rush job. I made steady progress on the center square, but didn’t finish it until very late on December 30th. It was really getting down to the wire, and I wasn’t sure I’d get that crazypants border on by the end of the year.

And then a wrench was thrown in the works when my husband announced he needed his three new pairs of work pants hemmed, and it needed to be done that day. That’s right, my plans to finish the crazypants block were being foiled by actual pants.

The tension mounted as I madly hemmed (non-crazy) pants … and the clock continued to tick down. I didn’t get back to the corner block until after 8 PM. Now I was getting really nervous. I only had a handful of pieces to cut and mark, and five seams to sew, but they were long and complicated seams. The New Year’s Eve fireworks the neighbors were setting off all evening just added to the drama.

By 11:15 PM, all the regular seams were done. All that was left was to appliqué that lone octagon in the point … the one that made the block officially “crazypants” in Becca’s opinion. At this point it was well past my bedtime, I was getting cranky, and it was touch-and-go whether I’d have it done in time. Thankfully, I put the last appliqué stitch on the crazypants octagon at 11:48 PM.

At 11:51 PM, I realized that in my rush, I’d sewn the center square section upside down from what I’d intended, but I think it still looks fine. I’m definitely not going to rip it out and resew it. Instead, I’ll just tell people that it’s all part of the block’s “crazypants” charm.