This block reminds me of a barn door, especially in this particular white on red color scheme. It’s a nice simple block; just what I needed after the previous complicated triangle.

I originally cut this block out for a doctor visit in September, because these days visiting medical facilities is fraught with peril and I’ve heard that handwork lowers one’s blood pressure. It turned out the wait time was so short at that doctor appointment that I didn’t even have a chance to take a single stitch.

But I was sure glad I had all those cut out pieces a week or so later when a family member needed to be taken to the emergency room (don’t worry – they’re doing fine now). When I got the call, I just grabbed my travel kit and raced out the door. I didn’t want to wait inside at the hospital (I’m not sure they’d even let me), so I hung out in the parking garage and distracted myself with stitching. The bulk of this block was constructed behind the wheel of my parked car:

It seems like going most everywhere these days is fraught with peril, and I’m thankful that so many of the activities I need or want to participate in can be done remotely from my home or car … even if they aren’t always quite as good as they were in person.

As I’m writing up this blog article, there is a virtual quilting retreat going on, in parallel with the usual in-person retreat. A few of my quilty friends are attending the in-person retreat and have logged into our virtual retreat on Zoom so we can interact. Every once in a while I look with longing at the Zoom window showing the in-person retreat, but I know my comfort level and it is not in the same room with people outside my bubble for extended periods.

While I’m not there in person and can’t always see or hear what the in-person attendees are laughing or oohing about, I’m still spending time with both virtual and in-person retreat friends, and making progress on my quilt projects … and that warms my heart. Also, I got a hot tip on a new iron that I’m thinking of buying.

The assembly process for the barn door block was pretty simple, just as expected. The only thing that ended up being kind of tricky was cutting out the fabric. The polka dots were arranged in stripes on the surface of the fabric, and I cut out the pieces so the dot-stripes ran along the length of each piece. But the repeat on the flower and leaf motifs was such that I couldn’t get an alignment I really liked. Instead, there are just random large leaves and flowers interrupting the flow of the design.

But I don’t dislike it so much that I’m willing to rip it apart and cut new pieces. Instead, I’m going to shut this barn door (literally, since the design looks like a barn door), and move on to the next block. Hopefully no horses have bolted.