It didn’t seem like a block wrapped up on the third of December should count for the December goal, so I decided to knock out another one … and with the whole month stretching out in front of me, I picked a doozy.

When I first got ready to work on this block, we were boldly going on a plane ride for the first time since the pandemic. I had forgotten just how much was involved in packing a quilting project for air travel. I feel the need to have “disposable” travel versions of everything, so I won’t be as upset if any tools are lost or confiscated (I’m talking about you, super awesome Gingher embroidery scissors that I bought in high school).

And after all that prep, I didn’t start this block at all on the trip – I just finished up the previous block and worked on the sashing goal for December. Once I got home and had my Ginghers in hand again, I finally got going on this one.

The big drama on this block was the curved pieces at the corners of the block. The “outside” pieces that the curves attached to were so narrow, I was really dreading trying to do curved piecing. I ended up cutting out red squares and appliquéing the tan pieces on to them.

The next step was to inset that appliquéd square into the Star Trek insignias (and now, the title of this article makes more sense!). It’s difficult enough to inset a 90 degree angle (as we saw on the previous block), but even more difficult when one of the pieces is two layers thick. So, I ended up trimming the part of the red square that was behind the tan quarter circle.

Compared to the corner wedges of the block, the center appliqué pieces were a breeze – just appliqué on the “lime wedges” on each triangle and call it good. The only really disappointing part there is that my fussy cutting was not quite as fussy as I thought, so the little spiral motifs are not in the same place on each wedge. But that is okay.

The last piece of the puzzle was attaching all the triangles to each other. No wonder this block was marked as advanced difficulty – it had all the advanced techniques! Curved piecing (although I sidestepped that), inset seams, appliqué, and an eight-pointed star seam to wrap it all up.

I feel like I’ve been bold enough for a while, and I’m looking forward to a more straightforward block next.