I redrafted BR2 because it didn't look like the triangles in Brenda's book were "half square" and it looked like they were on the quilt. This made the upper triangles smaller than you'd think, but they weren't really all that difficult to deal with. After all, these triangle pyramids appear in several blocks, like LS6 on the previous page.

RS4, on the other hand, is just like it is in the book, even though I still think the bottom triangle should be a "half-square." That would have made the diamond a square-on-point, and would have totally thrown off the design, so I kept it as it was.

I pieced most of BR3 and am happy with it except for the side triangles above the "feathered" triangle base. If I had to do it over again, I would probably just appliqué them. What I did was applique them onto the side triangles and then join the other half of the HST. It came out bulkier than I wanted, and it was a real struggle to not lose the points and to keep them somewhere in the vicinity of the points of the feathered border below.

What should have been a walk in the park, RS7, took several days and I'm not terribly happy with the outcome. Maybe I'm losing my focus, or maybe I should have marked the placement of the hearts before starting. The top two hearts being on an angle seem to have gotten the entire block off. *sigh*

Don't psych yourself out of G6 ("Papa's Star") like I did. Yes, the pieces in the center are bulky and very small, but except for the odd angles, this is not a difficult block. To get the flattest center, you will need to cut your seam allowances down to 1/8" and press them open (something which I did not do.) Once you get the center constructed, you can form the star in three strips: two sides with a point and two backgrounds and the center with a point, the center star pieced into a pentagon and two points below. Oh, and with the completion of this block, I am done with my first row: G.

I guess this means that I'm working on blocks again. Completing A9 means that I have finished the first row of blocks in the quilt. I am actually sitting in front of the TV watching the controversy in the Catholic chuch as people try and grasp how things could have gotten so out of hand. In its own way, it's as horrible as the events of Sept 11. And I'm not even Catholic.

On the other hand, the completion of I6, doesn't finish off row I. There are several rows, such as M, which still have two blocks left in them. I didn't think this block would work out as well as it did. Until I pressed the block, I was afraid that it would remain puffy and distorted since I actually pieced the center into the background and appliqued the leaves on afterward.

K11 finishes off row K, the second to be completed. I suppose that more triangles should follow. I picked K11 to work on because the piecing is fairly straight forward and gives me something more to keep my mind occupied while I ponder a new format for my resume...yes, you guess it. Sabbatical time is over and it's time to get a new job.