How Could I Forget?

As I was playing in the Sweat Shop tonight, I was sort of thinking about Halloween and how quickly this month has passed, when I suddenly remembered I was supposed to post the latest Comfort & Joy block at some point!  Yikes!  How late WAS I?

Well, I checked my email and found I was supposed to have shown you the block two days ago . . . but the other problem is that I haven't even started it yet.  So I won't be showing you this next block anytime soon, but you certainly CAN check it out over at Anne's blog--she has hers to show and no-blog Sandy's, and there are also links to other participants who I hope had better memories than I did this month.

In case you were wondering what I was playing with in the Sweat Shop . . . well, now that Halloween is here, it's time to think about Christmas.  I'm always drawn to simple, traditional red and white quilts and I don't really have any, so I grabbed the huge pile of red and white half square triangles that were leftover my red and white flying geese blocks I made a couple months back and started trimming.  If my math is correct, I should have about 240 half square triangles from the geese, so I trimmed up the first 48 and laid them out like this:

Then I thought about what I'd want to put in the center, and it occurred to me a white star on a red background might stand out nicely, so then I rotated all of those half square triangles so the red was facing the center, and now it looks like this:

I kind of think a white star on a red background will stand out more than a red star on a white background, which is what I'd have to make with the first lay out--IF I wanted a star center.

With 240 half square triangles altogether and each block needing 48 of them, I'll have enough to make four large blocks with some leftover half square triangles (actually enough to make five blocks, I think but how would I arrange FIVE?).  And I think the best way to do this one is going to be to put all of these half square triangles up on the design wall before sewing them together.  Can you tell this project might take me awhile?  Yep, I can too.

So, tomorrow night--Halloween night--between the Trick-or-Treaters, I'll take down and fold away the stuff that's on my wall now and start putting up 2-1/2" half square triangle blocks.  I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Happy Halloween!