Quintessentially Quilly

I looked at the directions on the pattern page and my brain started freaking out. Too many little pieces! Mayday! Mayday! I am well-practiced at making half-square triangles, but the Puss in a Corner block also has 9 tiny squares. I hate working with tiny pieces! Happily, only the fussy cut flower one had to be cut tiny. For the others, I cut two strips, one red, one blue; then I sewed the strips together and sub-cut them to the proper size of the joined pair. That brilliant hack wasn’t my brainchild. One of our wonderful support group admins shared the tip and I snapped it up. When I get more practiced, I will (hopefully) be able to figure out such things for myself.

Getting more practiced at piecing was the primary reason I first became interested in The Gypsy Wife Quilt pattern. The completed quilt sports an incredible array of blocks in a dazzling array of sizes. Making it will give me plenty of practice making a good variety of blocks.

The pattern also calls for a crazy mash-up of colors, which gave me some pause. I was all set to make this quilt in a much tamer color palate, then Amoeba threw in his two cents and said if I skimped on the colors and patterns, it wouldn’t be a true “Gypsy Wife Quilt,” so I hesitantly agreed to step out of my comfort zone. However, as I started gathering the fabrics, I began to embrace the idea. Now I am whole-heartedly going wild. This is going to be one flashy Gypsy Wife.

And Amoeba didn’t just toss his two cents in and walk away. He helped me pick out the fabrics for the two wildest blocks. He added the orange and purple polka dot pop to the double-bordered hourglass block, and helped choose the pink and the gold for the half-square triangles in this block. The three tamer blocks I made by myself.

That’s block five, starched and pressed.