I've made no secret of the fact that I don't feel I do applique well. This triangle, TR12, is part of the Dear Jane List's Triangle Challenge and is ALL about applique. I had sneaked up on it by doing melons of various sizes and hearts and blocks, but this is the applique that makes me run screaming. What can I say? At least I don't have to do it more than once!

The list of blocks I still need to do is dwindling. A great deal of those are applique and curved piecing. I decided to work on J3 because there are really only 4 seams that are curved and I thought it might work as a bit of a warm-up.

E12 is actually not a bad block. The only intimidating part is the row of squares set on point in the center. Once that wasout of the way, the rest of the pieces are things I have done ad infinitum. It boils down to a 9-patch with flying geese. I have to say, though, I am proud of this block. All of the points join up! Something that was causing me great consternation when I first started this quilt.

Another block that came out much better than I expect. the central 9-patch is made up of 4 pieced blocks. In the book they have been drawn with triangles flattening off each point, but in Jane's quilt, the small terminating triangles are not there. The tough part about this block were the pieced rectangles in the middle of the border. I had elected to cut the background fabric for those little blocks on the bias and, while it looks great in the end, bias is not my favorite thing to work with.

This block, F5, can probably be appliqued, but I chose to piece it, since it looked like that's what Jane did. The arcs of which the melons are part reminded me of the curved seams in J3, which I had recently completed. I had a small problem with one of the squares not looking "squarish" enough, but it's not enough to bug me into doing this one again.

I redrafted RS13 for several reasons. I pieced the small flanking triangles into the bottom, adding a seam. I also made the rectangles between the square and the big bottom triangle so they didn't go all the way out to the seam. All the triangles were redrafted to be "right" triangles, which wasn't the case in the book. The changes were minor, but I think the proportions look better this way.

M11 reminds me of the triangle I did for the President's quilt: BR5. I must have remade that one 20 times in the vain attempt to paper piece it. I never did. This block when together much more easily by hand. I'm not sure if that was because of BR5 or in spite of it.

The little border strips on the center triangles are less than 1/4". I struggled, redrafting the block to make them bigger, but I just couldn't manage it. The other difference between this draft and the one in the book, is I pieced the long borders, as it looked like Jane did. I then thought that, maybe, she used a striped fabric for those pieces. I like it this way, though. Twenty-nine more blocks to go...