A New York Beauty

Thursday I took another stab at my county fair block. I revised my original drawing and then traced it onto another piece of paper. (Because, of course, if I used the original pattern, I wouldn't have anything left to trace for the next square.)
This pattern was regular paper (or rather, parchment paper, but it turned out to be the same weight as regular printer paper). I don't recommend it. I'll have to go out and buy some tissue or other specialized paper.

The regular paper dulls your needle quicker, is hard to rip off, and wrecks your seams even as you rip it off.

I incorporated several changes:

1. The spikes are different heights which is closer to how the original statue is.

2. There's no longer a final section of background fabric sewn to the outside of the block. It was hard to piece (and have it flat) and it created a seam right where you would want to sew the sashing on. Not good.

The new pattern continues the seams of the spikes all the way to the outside edge. I should have thought of this sooner as it is exactly how it was done on my Hawaiian Star quilt.

3. It started even larger. It's supposed to be 12.5" edge to edge. I made the original block 1/4" larger all the way around so I could cut it down, and it was barely 12" (in spots--it wasn't exactly square!) The second one I made 1/2" bigger on each side and it was still close when I tried to trim it down to 12.5 inches!

4. I changed the design of the windows. I'm not overly happy with either, but the first one is closer to what it should be.

I think that is all, and here is how it turned out:

I set the two blocks side by side for fun and you can see how a fun assortment of these blocks could come together to quite a lovely quilt:
One name for these blocks is New York Beauty which is very fitting for the Lady of Liberty. Another name is Cinqo de Mayo which would be more appropriate if she came from Spain rather than France.

But with the influx of Spanish speaking residents in recent decades, perhaps it's more fitting than it first appears.

I think after these two prototypes, I am ready to draw up a final pattern and use the "real" fabrics from the county fair set. I'll keep you posted.