Minecraft Block Complete Finally!

The birthday party was cancelled.
I found this out at about this point in my process. 
I kept going. Kind of.

My diagram is confusing but useful - it shows where the axe is to be and the orange squares are actually turquoise in fabric - but adding more blue to the diagram was going to confuse me.

The original block pattern I found was made up of 256 - 1 1/2 inch squares. No way was I doing that! Plus it used stabilizer to keep the pieces positioned while sewing into rows - which needed to be rinsed away.

Uh uh. There had to be another way! Hence the reason for my diagram and figuring out where I could make rectangles instead of squares. 

I really wanted to go easy and make all of the green squares just green, but my son vetoed that saying I had to have another colour in the background.

{I was also originally going to do white and make much larger rectangles - like 4 1/2 x 8 1/2 in some places - to fill in the background and just quilt in the pixellation. Vetoed here too.}

So I the project sat for several days until I decided I had to get it off of the design wall so I could quilt quilts. I didn't want all of the tiny pieces falling off when bumped and I didn't want to scrap it.  I realized I could still use it as a Christmas present! Motivation re-engaged :)

It actually went together pretty quickly. I sewed patches together for two rows at a time and then as I worked on the next pair of rows I started to sew rows together.
It was at this point that the block actually started to look *good* or at least recognizable.

The block is finally complete. That was probably the most sewing I've done to make one 16 inch block!!
Now to turn it into something to gift. 
I will quilt it at the 1 inch interval to emphasize the pixels and maybe turn it into a pillow front. 
I have a few more days to think about it, right?

Do you have any projects that are taking a long time to finish right now? How do you find motivation?


With Joy,


Sarah V