2014 County Fair Raffle Quilt Block (The Wheel Goes Round)

Last time I mentioned my raffle quilt block, the Carpenter's Wheel, it was finished,

but too small. By a good 1/2 inch.

That was January 26. By January 31, I had made the decision and started ripping it apart.

 Piece by piece, until I had a big pile:

 I decided the central cross shape was far enough.

(I couldn't stand the thought of redoing the star.)

Then to help the pieces get rid of their very well-pressed seams, I soaked them in water and let them dry:

That's a big puzzle to put together. (Ok, so not compared to an actual 5,000 piece puzzle, but you know what I mean.)

And then the pieces sat and sat and sat and waited for me. Apparently waited until I finally felt the looming deadline of the Fair. I started putting this back together about a week ago and concentrated so hard on it that I didn't take any pictures.

I assembled the whole thing and it measured (close enough to) 12.5"--the needed dimension. But the edges were very ruffly meaning the outside rows were too long. I took out the center light coloured rectangle from each outside row because that's where the problem seemed to be and sewed it back in with a larger seam. This helped a lot and my square ended up like this:

Not too bad. I got rid of every last hanging thread, and there were a lot of them with all that ripping and resewing. The square does measure closer to 12.5 x 12.5 than anything else, but some of the edges are uneven. There isn't enough width to cut them straight.

Since I made this block three times and made a fourth out of my practice fabrics, I figure I have enough for a wagon now!

I am still proud of the back and how good the pattern of seams looks. (How you press your seams is a very big deal in quilting.)

I think it's quite a lovely block, although I have no desire to make a quilt out of a bunch of them! And now that it's done, I'm wondering if I should have gotten more creative with the colours. Maybe made all the points of the outside shapes one colour. And of course, I would have loved to use more red, but it was the only bright colour and I felt it had to go into the star.

One thing is for sure, I will be putting a suggestion in the suggestion box to use some bright modern fabrics one of these years. It would be a nice change!