After the last block with all of its demotivating appliqué, I needed to re-find my mojo, so naturally I picked a block with more appliqué.

Never one to shrink from a challenge, I opted to get the ridiculously small appliqué at the top of the triangle out of the way first. Knowing it was going to be a beast, I cut a background piece way bigger than what was called for, appliquéd the leaf (or in this case, probably a candle flame) to it, and only later cut out the piece it was sewn to:

Last time I tried this technique, I did not properly line up the appliqué when cutting out the background piece. This time I was clever and cut out the inside of the pattern piece on the stitching line, so I’d have a little frame to use to line up the candle flame on the background piece:

I felt like this one piece of one block went a long way to restoring my mojo. It was so tiny, but came out looking pretty awesome. Here is a photo of it with the requisite penny alongside so you can see how truly small it is:

With that feat of appliqué under my belt, I felt ready to tackle the other (bound to be much easier) piece of appliqué at the bottom of the block. I opted to sew the row of pieces above it together first, and attach it to the background fabric for the bottom row so I didn’t have to worry about accidentally catching the appliqué in my seam when I sewed the rows together:

After that was done, I attached the appliqué to the bottom row:

It was while taking the above photograph that I noticed one of the squares had the vines going horizontally and the other vertically … and once noticed, I couldn’t stop noticing it. I decided to undo those seams and restitch them with the square on the right oriented the correct way. So I ended up having to be cautious about catching the appliqué in the seam after all …

Now all the pieces have vines going horizontally, except for the “candle” piece near the top. I felt like that was okay; I didn’t want to cut out a new piece, plus I reasoned that the piece was so narrow, it would look odd with the vines going horizontally.

I bravely opted to do this triangle block without using Avery labels; I thought it was worth the risk, since the block was assembled in rows, and I could ensure each seam was level as I worked my way up the block. It was definitely nice not having to deal with all the stickiness of the labels, and the triangle came out the intended size (and not listing to one side like a sail).

While I didn’t quite make my deadline of 15 blocks done in the first half of 2019, I was only four days late, and now that my mojo has been found, I feel like I’m getting right back on track. On to the next block!