Port and Starboard Quilt Block

Take a gander at my bonus block for the quilt along (OK, well first I'm going to yakity-yak and then you can see it). I love it and wouldn't mind making a whole quilt out of this one (but I probably would get bored - it would be a LOT of half square triangles). There was no set block last week - the bonus challenge was to design your own. I tried to. Really, I did. I'm just not a quilt designer - I would much rather follow directions for quilt blocks. I'm not too experienced with quilting, so by the time I figure out my fabrics and am faced with careful cutting and piecing my brain doesn't even want to try figuring it out. Horrible, I know, and  not really in keeping with the idea of a skill-builder quilt, but there you have it. So I cheated. I wanted to practice half square triangles, but I didn't feel like figuring out the math. So I pulled out a quilt block book that I had bought a while ago. It shows you how to make 200 blocks in several sizes. I found one made of HSTs and hacked away. I actually had a lot of fun putting this one together:

The pattern is called Port and Starboard. It looks like pinwheels, there's a hint of a star in there somewhere, and even a few bowties (? hourglasses? not sure what they are) thrown in. There's a lot going on but in a very cohesive way. I was so excited that my points came together again:

This one was the quickest to put together, but I had a lot of little dog ears to cut off. It got pretty annoying, so I should probably just NOT make an entire quilt out of these.

Even though I'm using the same fabric stack for this quilt, the way they're placed gives each block an entirely different look. For example, I was thinking the polka dots above were more of a 'light' fabric, but when you pair this block with last week's, it looks like more of a 'medium' fabric, especially when compared to the cherries, which are obviously 'light.'

See how on the left there's a pinkish hue and on the right it is very white? I guess I'll just be doing some strategic block placement when it comes time to sew it all together. Ugh.... headache.... how do people figure this stuff out? I don't even want to think about how long this would take me if I used my entire stash and not just a part of it...

OK, I'll zip it now. Have a fantabulous weekend!