I’ve just returned from our guild’s quilting retreat, and I’m still in that “not quite ready to unpack and return to reality” phase.

I spent a lot of the retreat working on an enormous (and enormously boring) section of sashing. It had some upsides – I didn’t have to concentrate too hard, and could chat with friends while I worked.

But then my friend Judith brought out a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t take up a lot of space doing my handwork, so I volunteered half of my worktable for the puzzle in progress (shown here lurking in my peripheral vision).

The puzzle was a photo of a Kaffe Fassett quilt, and the quilter had reused fabrics in different areas of the quilt, so not all of the puzzle pieces with a particular fabric actually went together in the same part of the puzzle. It was definitely a challenging one.

And as I was sitting there, working on my boring sashing, I kept seeing puzzle pieces out of the corner of my eye that I was itching to put in their places (both literally and figuratively).

It was definitely a distraction (albeit a super fun one), and I found myself making less and less progress on the boring sashing. At one point, I was requiring myself to finish thirty stitches for every three puzzle pieces I placed.

It was clear that the puzzle was holding my attention much better than long stretches of sashing. I was starting to regret bringing sashing to retreat instead of a nice, juicy, many-pieced block to focus on.

The most fun blocks for me to make are the ones that aren’t too difficult, but have a lot of pieces to fit together … just like a jigsaw puzzle.

And this forty-piecer was no exception. It was all just squares, triangles, and a handful of rectangles, but I really enjoyed laying it all out, making sure the pieces were cut just so, and savoring the satisfying feeling of pieces “clicking” into place.

Last month I was bemoaning that I’d left so many of the blocks with a high piece count for the very end of the project … but now I’m glad that I did. Just like the jigsaw puzzle, they will hold my interest much better than that boring sashing ever could.