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A1 was the first block I made, and I immediately decided I needed to redraft it. It didn't look like a pinwheel to me, it looked like a bunch of half-square triangles. I sewed them into 4 rows of 4 blocks.

Looking closer, now that I've completed the blocks, I believe I was in error. I used to think that the central square was, basically, a 4-patch of quarter-square triangles set on point, but now I think the central pinwheel is SUPPOSED to be accentuated by the slight octagon formed by the off-center quarter-square triangles and the points that don't seem to meet (not drawn).

Jane uses this octagonal element in F1 and she uses the pieced triangles to put the block on point in many, many blocks, the easiest of which is D13.

I did not do the blocks in the order they appear in the book, and I do not plan on putting them together in the same order Jane did in her quilt. Call me a rebel. Whatever.

A2 looked wrong to me in the book. I agreed with the central "hourglass" of quarter-square triangles, but I felt the blocks ajacent were actually flying geese, and even the plain blocks looked pieced to me.

The outside pieces Brenda drafted seemed "fussier" than needed, so I merged the quarter-square triangle into a longer quadrilateral, sewing opposite sides on and then finishing the block.

I was contemplating piecing this block as a square on point, with the corners sort of "log cabin"ed around a smaller triangle, but I felt the way I did it gave me more control and I didn't have to work with quite so much bias.

Almost everyone I talk to about A3 appliques it, using either traditional or reverse applique. I pieced it and I think Jane pieced it as well.

If you look closely at the photo in the book, there appears to be seams coming down from the corners, but there are no seams in the central 4-pointed figure.

I suppose you could piece a square into 4 parallograms and use the sides of the squares to position the "football" shapes, but why bother when only a little more work can allow you to piece the entire block.

Curved seams are not so bad if you remember to pin the heck out of them and clip them before you press the block.

While I understand many of the changes Brenda made to the block designs in the book, eliminating extraneous-looking seams and adding others to simplify construction, I think that A13 is simply drafted wrong.

The "secondary" points of the star are missing. Instead they are included at the ends of "cross" strips which makes it impossible to piece and look like the block in the picture.

This is the way I "corrected" it.