Sandy Maxfield of Sandy Star Designs created this Poinsettia for the I Wish You a Merry Quilt-Along which was her second design for this QAL and it also was as fun as the first   (I Wish You a Merry QAL Block 6, Angel Block).

I mentioned with the last block in this QAL that picking fabrics continues to be fun and challenging.  I expanded out of my original fabric pull to create the poinsettia so as to have strong greens and reds.

I also chose to make the quarter half square triangles not by cutting the originals in half but placing a full square over them and sewing cross the original HST seam.  It worked fine until I realized that two of the squares QST opposites were backwards and I needed to rip them apart, but the idea had been to not have to sew on the bias.  Oh well.

Here’s the first version of it…

The block came out near perfect for me, hurrah!  Yet I had this nagging feeling the fabrics didn’t work as well together as I wanted them to with the selection from the other blocks.  Deja vu?  I had the same issue with the background on the angel.

Several of the Facebook participants in the QAL suggested to me that we have a few blocks left to make, where I could use some more of the new green and red fabric to pull the overall look together and others really liked the block and commented that their blocks were scrappy, using different fabrics.  I appreciate each of these perspectives, yet really felt the new fabrics were more traditional than I wanted for this particular quilt.

Yup I chose to redo it.  I thought I might make a pillow from the original but my husband wisely said you can always make another quilt next year.  Also, what a great excuse to use more fabric up!  I am quite happy with the results.  Funny that the remake of this block doesn’t have the perfect points of the first, yet I am happier with it overall.

Doesn’t it match well with my little Elf?

This QAL is so much fun.  Check out a couple of the earlier blocks you can find here and here.