This triangle block was stitched together in one afternoon during Spring retreat. The construction is fairly simple, once you work out which pieces to sew together first, so that you don’t end up with unnecessarily set-in seams. The foundation piecing patterns from the Dear Jane software were helpful in figuring this out.

In fact, this ballet slipper of a block was laced together so quickly that I started to worry I would run out of things to do during the last day of retreat.

I’d brought some sashing, as well as supplies for three blocks to work on. For days – possibly weeks – before retreat, I’d been debating about whether to do sashing or new blocks while I was at retreat, and I wanted to be prepared to work on anything.

The internal debate continued to rage once I arrived at retreat. I had one block nearly done that I finished on the first morning of retreat, and then I finished this block that first afternoon.

What would I work on next? Would I stick to my usual schedule and switch to sashing after 1-2 blocks? Or would I throw caution to the wind and start a third block?

Spoiler alert: I did not throw caution to the wind. After completing this block, I switched to sashing as originally planned.

And it turns out, sashing at retreat is a little bit boring. Plus, it takes forever – you wouldn’t think it would take that long to sew sashing strips between four blocks, but it chewed up so much time.

I got the sashing pieces cut out and marked at the end of the first day of retreat, spent the entire second day (granted, it was a short day so I could be back home for the bowling league finals), and a chunk of the morning on the third day to wrap up the sashing.

A few months ago, I’d said that sashing was great because you could just pick it up for a few minutes and put it down again … but clearly it adds up to a lot of minutes!

Or possibly I just kept putting it down to chat with quilty friends because the sashing was boring …

So, for future retreats, I think I do want to arrange it so that I have blocks to work on at retreat rather than using up so much retreat time on boring sashing.

Maybe I could do three blocks at retreat between sashing batches, and then when I’m at home, just do one block between sashing batches?

I’ll probably shuffle the blocks vs. sashing schedule around several more times before the next retreat this fall. It’s a delicate dance.