#8 - Barbara

Here's my #8. I had not worked with such tiny pieces before and I'm doing the blocks in numerical order so I couldn't skip it. The reason I'm doing them in order is because if I selected blocks then I would leave all the hard ones till last and would not complete the quilt - I know myself well. Also, it has the second (or third?) largest number of pieces and I knew if I got it done then I wouldn't be so daunted by the other horror blocks.

I'm not sure I have done the right thing because, of course, later on I would be more experienced in using tiny pieces and would have made a better job of it. As you can see, it went wonky in the middle and a little down one strip but it is a 6" square and so I'm leaving it and have ticked it as DONE. However, I know that when I have finished all the blocks I will quite likely come back and do this one again because it bothers me (or sneak a new middle square into the block!). The only tips I can give are to be very methodical and persevere because it takes ages just to do half of it. I would recommend lots of pinning and also tacking the seams of the triangle strips because they really shift otherwise, especially trying to match the first inner row of triangles with the squared strips surrounding them. The other thing I did was to write down the total number of pieces and subtract how many I had used each time I did a strip - this made me feel I was getting somewhere. Good luck!