I cut out the pieces for this block on the last day of retreat and marked all the stitching lines:

Then I spent a lot of time (way more than I cared to) waffling about which pieces to sew together first. In the quiet before everyone returned from lunch, I had plenty of time and space to waffle:

Yes, we’re a messy bunch, but we sure do have fun. You may be able to see some of my completed Dear Jane work on the world’s smallest design wall in the background, leant to me for the duration of retreat by my friend Becca.

As folks started to return from lunch, I realized there was only one sensible way to start this block, if I wanted to avoid a bunch of completely unnecessary set-in seams. So I stitched the center triangles to the odd-shaped pieces to make larger triangles for the center diamond:

Then I spent a bunch more time waffling about the next step in the process. Should I assemble the diamond first, do the appliqué first, or sew the corner triangles on to the triangle segments to make four squares?

I only got as far as attaching the pairs of triangle segments to each other, figuring that step was going to be needed whether I was going to start with the center diamond or with the four squares:

After I got home, I waffled some more, and eventually decided to assemble the four squares, then do the appliqué, then sew the four squares to each other.

My rationale is that the appliqué points are so close to the seam that I’d prefer to not have the bulk of the appliquéd piece in the way while sewing the seam. But then I’d rather appliqué to a smaller piece (a quarter of the block) rather than appliqué those diamonds on to the entire (less wieldy) block.

Despite all the waffling required, I think the assembly order I went with was a good one.

While I was wrapping this block up, I was watching (listening to, actually, like all hardcore quilters), a cooking competition show on TV where the contestants had to use a pizzelle press, which looks like a little waffle iron and is used for making waffle cookies with fancy pressed circular designs.

Given that this block kind of looks like one of those pizzelles, I think it’s only appropriate that I spent so much time waffling about the best way to assemble it.