It’s late in the evening on December 31st, and I still have four blocks after this one to make my yearly goal. I’m probably not going to make that, but I at least want to complete the goal of catching up on my blogging, so here’s the story of this block …

As usual, I was scrambling to get the block pieces cut out, because we were going out to get haircuts and I wanted to have something to occupy myself with while it was my kid’s turn in the salon chair. I finished cutting the pieces at the last minute, quickly zipped them up into my travel kit, drove to the haircut place, opened the kit … and all 13 red squares were missing.

The construction of this block is such that I couldn’t make any progress without those squares. Every single possible seam I could start with required a red square. Without any stitching to do, I was forced to make small talk instead – something I do not enjoy or excel at.

When I got home, I found four of the 13 red squares on the floor of my sewing room, right underneath my sewing table. I looked high and low for the others, but couldn’t find them anywhere. After a few days of searching, I gave up and cut out nine new squares (wasting precious red fabric).

The block went together fairly easily (it is a beginner block, after all), but I continued to be annoyed at the vanishing act pulled by those red squares.

The main concern with this block was all the bulky seam allowance, but with the aid of my snazzy new wool pressing mat, the block as a whole lays nice and flat. Check out the tidy back of the block (and get a sneak peek at my pressing mat):

I know, like I need one more item in my too full sewing room, but it helps me press the blocks so beautifully (although I will say that the wool must be fresh off the sheep, because it still has a distinctive farm smell). My hope is that having this small pressing mat will allow me to keep my big ironing board folded up in the closet and not taking up so much floor space.

A week later, I was digging through the bag that I’d carried my Dear Jane supplies to retreat in (looking for the fabric from Marissa to add to my blog), and there were the missing nine red squares in the bottom of my bag. When I was searching initially, I’d looked in the top of the bag, but figured it was so tightly packed that nothing could possibly have fallen down to the bottom. Boy, was I wrong.

By a quirky coincidence, I discovered an article that same day about Swedish death cleaning – the notion that you should pare down your belongings so that your loved ones won’t have to sort through all your stuff after you die.

Maybe these vanishing squares are a wake-up call that I have too much stuff in my sewing nook. It should not have taken me so long to find those darn squares, and maybe if I had fewer sewing supplies to look through …

I’m most definitely not a minimalist by nature, so I’m not sure how well this Swedish death cleaning would actually go. It is the end of the year, though, which is a traditional time for fresh starts and changing habits.

Whether I Swedish death clean or not, one thing I’m certainly not getting rid of is those nine extra red squares. There’s bound to be at least one other block in this quilt that calls for 1″ red squares.