I’ve made no bones about how worried I am about the amount of red fabric I’ve got for this quilt. I’d planned to use it for the sashing strips between the blocks, and for the alternating plain triangles around the edges, but I’ve been unsure about having enough red for all those pieces.

I’ve completed some adjacent blocks, but I’ve been too chicken to piece them together, because if I don’t have enough red fabric, I don’t want it to be obvious that I ran out and had to switch to a different red fabric midstream.

The required yardage estimation in the Dear Jane software is somewhat alarming (according to its calculations I was going to be around 4 yards shy of the amount needed). My hope was that it was erring very, very far on the side of caution.

So, in 2018, I started an experiment. I had just used up all I could of a big piece of red fabric I’d cut off of the bolt when I started the project, but I couldn’t remember how big that piece had been. So, I made a note to myself about the date (August 25, 2018) and the size of the new piece I cut off the bolt (1 yard).

Now, almost two years and 44 blocks later, I’ve used up all I can of that 1-yard piece, and I’m ready to make some calculations.

According to the software, the blocks that I’ve made from this 1-yard piece should have required 3 1/4 yards … so I’m feeling a little better. It seems the software’s estimations are somewhat divorced from reality.

Based on this number, and the number of blocks I completed with that first mystery-sized piece of fabric that I thought was either 2 or 3 yards, I’m guessing it was also a 1-yard piece. So, it seems that I’m in good shape as far as red fabric quantity.

Now I can dare to dream about starting to attach the blocks to each other when I need a change of pace from producing new blocks and triangles.

This block had so many tiny pieces that it allowed me to use up some of the last little scraps from that 1-yard piece … in fact, I think I might have even used a couple of scraps from the previous 1-yard piece.

I did simplify the design a little bit, combining some green triangles stacked on top of green trapezoids to form bigger green triangles. There was just no room for extra seam allowance in this block, so if I can eliminate some seams, why wouldn’t I?

The only disappointment was that those eliminated seams were in the green fabric instead of the red. Every little bit of saved fabric makes my yardage calculations look that much more rosy.