This block travelled a lot. I started it at home, then took it with me to bowling, then it went to the ER (and even hung out briefly in the ICU), and I finally wrapped it up at retreat.

After finishing the previous block, I quickly cut out some of the pieces for this one, just in case I needed something to work on while I was on the go.

But I didn’t get the appliqué diamonds cut out in that first batch of cutting, so the block construction decision was made for me: there was no stitching path where I did the appliqué part first.

Instead, I started right in on the inner red strips and the cream squares at bowling, where the lighting is not great, because those were the pieces I had on hand.

Then I finished those inner pieces while sitting with a family member in the hospital, where my focus was not great and I needed something really simple to work on.

I might have put the outer borders on at the hospital too, except that I had not marked the stitching lines on those long strips, and hadn’t brought any rulers longer than 4” with me.

After I got home, I made sure to mark those stitching lines, and finally cut out the diamonds, so I was ready for all the remaining parts of the block.

When I got to retreat, I decided to appliqué the diamonds on before putting on the outer borders. My tortured reasoning was that sometimes appliqué cinches up the underlying fabric a bit, and when I’m sewing pieced sections to one long strip, sometimes the pieced section is a little bigger than the single strip.

So, the idea is that the appliqué process would cinch up that pieced section and make it a little smaller, and with any luck, it would end up being just the same size as the long strips. And it was!

The path to completing this block meandered all over the place, based on the pieces I had ready and the places I was at … but I got to the end product of another finished block just the same.