Once I got past all the jigsaw-esque stuff, it went along pretty well. Here’s a closer view as well. Guess there’s not much to do now except machine applique all those edges. In days past I would have welcomed this project as my carry-along project for my coming trip to Houston. Can’t do that anymore – no pins, no needles, no scissors allowed on planes.

OK – let’s be clear on this. I don’t like jigsaw puzzles. Not for any particular reason and not because I wouldn’t like to. They just make me run screaming from the room every time I try to participate.

So why wasn’t it painfully obvious that I needed a little more than just simple lettering — A, B…. G — to reassemble the pieces going around my coat of arms. Drew up the design, lettered the pieces (symmetrical mirror image design), cut my templates apart and ironed them to the fabric.

that’s when the fun began. the letters were in order, top to bottom, but how the heck did they go together? which pieces went on which side. What was I thinking???? I finally did get one side “assembled” – that is, pinned together so I knew how it went, — but I was exhausted and went to bed. what the heck was I thinking.

and what’s more, I could think of at least a handful of things I could have done to prevent all this megillah. The fact that I only thought of it after it was too late is probably the reason why I only do applique rarely and never in quantity.

People often say to me ‘oh I don’t have the patience to quilt.’ My reply is uniform — it’s nothing about patience and it’s all about persistance.

I’m feeling that at the moment as I sew on the outer triangles on 330 plus square in a square blocks (see below). It’s all about getting the job done and there’s not much about being patient while doing it. It’s going OK though. The first squares done seemed to tip the thing to red and I was concerned I’d lost the pinkness of my pink and green quilt. I purposely chose some of the lighter blocks and added some medium pinks to the larger triangle mix and voila – back to pink.

Yup – it’s all about persistance with a good dollop of “what if I did this?”