I did finish the Hill Country Spring blocks last night. I had fewer done than I thought I had, but I finished them all. I also laid out the quilt - but didn't get a start on sewing it together as last night was also CWF.

These are the 8 rows - there are 8 rows of 5 blocks, which makes a longish narrow quilt (not quite twin sized, but good for putting across the foot of the bed if you want more warmth across your feet)



The stacks go vertically:

1 3 5 7
2 4 6 8

You can't see on there the little trick I use to keep track of which stack represents which row. I pin the blocks together and order the pins like Roman numerals. (So row one has one vertical pin, row five has two angled to look like a V, etc.). It makes me laugh to do it because I remember one of my classmates in third grade or whenever wailing about "Why do we need to know Roman numbers? We'll never use them!" Ah, but often you can FIND a use for things. (I'm also good at knowing when an old movie was made by quickly reading the Roman numbers on the "title card" that usually comes up at the start).


I also got out the packet of fabrics that I'm going to use for that quilt I talked about:



Planning quilts is my favorite step - putting the fabrics together, figuring out what pattern would work best with them. Sewing up the pieces - especially if it's fairly simple sewing - is a close second favorite.

I think I like sewing fabric patches together to make a quilt because it's partly a making-order-out-of-chaos thing, and it's also, in its own way, like playing with blocks. I liked playing with blocks as a kid, both the Lego bricks that my brother and I had so many of, and then the old-timey alphabet blocks that one of my grandmothers had a big set of that she would bring out for the grandkids to play with.

I was never into building towers and knocking them down (Well, maybe when I was very small, to young to remember), but I did like building "things" - either I'd make patterns with the blocks, like crenellated walls, or I'd build "habitats" (either zoos or "houses") for the little plastic zoo and farm animals that I always had as a kid (they were one of my favorite toys - the small animals, maybe about an inch to two inches in size, that you used to be able to buy in bagged sets at places like the Kresge's. I had tons of those - the predictable zoo and farm sets, but also some "oddball" animals (I think I referred to having  a toy pangolin and how I always sort of liked it because it was so unusual) and a set of dog breeds of the world.)

In a way, "making things" out of pieces of fabric is kind of like playing with blocks was. Or at least I think it is.

I also found another pack of fat quarters that I put together and never used, perhaps I'll do a second one of those "Flower Show" quilts out of. I think I will use a strong dark pink for the narrow sashing (I already have some on hand), and probably white again for the wide sashing.



I do need to "discard" one fabric from the pile. I think it will either be the very pale floral stripe, or maybe one of the bird-print fabrics (the pink or the yellow one in the lower right corner, because they are so similar).