Minnesota Quilt Block

Has anyone else had a week that made you want to punch it in the face and then kick it while it was down? I don't have any specific occurrences that made it a bad week; as a matter of fact it was quite a good week, objectively speaking. But there was a feeling or something about it that has made me eager for it to be part of the past. It seemed to have a lot of WTF moments, that's for sure. Maybe it's the time change, perhaps the impending full moon, who knows. But...just...ugh....or whatever.

OK, moving on. The other night I decided to "throw" together my Minnesota quilt block for the QAL. This was perhaps the mostest perfectest block I have made from start to finish. I think I am very in love with foundation paper piecing. How can you go wrong when you're sewing on a printed straight line and have extra fabric to cover your...y'know....  The block patterns thus far have been pretty straightforward. I've seen some really complicated looking blocks out there--we haven't hit those yet, but I'm actually eager to give one a go. My past few blocks haven't been terrible, and I credit the foundation piecing for that.

So here it is:

The plain red is a lot more vibrant than I thought it would be - that's the only thing I think I'd change if I were to have a do-over (which I'm not). Or maybe more cherries...I never can get enough of sweet little cherry prints.

Here are the parts that were paper-pieced (the hourglass blocks were traditionally stitched):

There is no way they would look that nice without the paper piecing. It's a little weird to get used to the method--it seems so counter-intuitive, but once you get going you don't even think twice.

So that's that. I've been stuffing Christmas trees and doing some super-fun hand sewing (insert sarcasm here) this week, but they're all done and I'm glad for it. Now I'm off to bed. Usually I wouldn't write/say/acknowledge something like this since it's so cliche, but I feel it so fervently this week I must: T.G.I.F. :)