Okay, then, CHAIN My Heart!

As mentioned, I retired the last block and made a new one for the next set of TAST 2012 stitches. I decided to try using a crazy quilt template found via Google image search, for the new block I was going to make. I sized it, printed it out, cut out the pieces, and traced the shapes onto pieces of fabric. So far so good. But when it came to putting them together, for some reason, It just wasn't working.

I fussed around with it for half a day and then thought, well, I'll just bag that idea and sew them together as the spirit moves me. And it came out not too badly!

Block 2

I like it much better than the previous block. It's larger, for one, by a couple of inches each side, and the seams just look like they make more sense, and it's backed with muslin already. And I got it done just before Sharon released the Week 8 stitch.

But the Week 8 stitch turned out to be a Chain Stitch, and I couldn't figure out where to put it on the new block, so I put it on a different block. I'd made a heart block, as an exercise in learning crazy quilting. So here's my chain stitch:

Heart in progress

In hindsight, I think a slightly lighter green and fewer strands would have looked better, because now it looks to me like it needs more on the right side for balance. Or something. I like how the heart is looking, otherwise, though. I like the chain stitch. I think it will come in handy for a number of things in the future.

Let's see, what did I learn this week. I learned that if you just keep going, even if you don't know what you're doing quite yet, things get better. I learned that giving a little more thought to weight of thread and color is probably not a bad idea for best results. And I learned that patting yourself on the back for making some progress feels pretty good.