Farmer's Wife 1930s Block 7, Augusta: The Diaper Block

I finished another 6" sampler block yesterday!  Behold Block 7 "Augusta" from The Farmer's Wife 1930s Quilt Sampler:

Farmer's Wife 1930s Block 7, Augusta

This block went together more smoothly than the last one I did.  This time, before joining sections together that needed seams matched, I stuck a pin straight through at the intersection with the papers still attached on both sides, then slid the two units apart along the pin, put a glue stick gob between the two seam allowances, and then slid them back together so they were right up against the pin head.  Then I removed the foundation papers and pinned the units on either side of the seam intersection, with that "stab pin" still holding the matched intersection in place while the glue dried, and put pins on either side of the matched intersection LAST -- right before I put the whole thing under the presser foot to stitch the units together.  It's more accurate than the other things I tried on the last block, and there was zero seam ripping -- much more fun!

When I chose the fabrics for this block I wasn't sure about how they would play together in the block.  Now that it's finished, I do like it -- the only thing I might change is that there is a LOT of that busy blob print.  It would look better if the four triangles surrounding the center square were in a solid color like orange, pale green, etc.  However, that fabric came from an oddly shape scrap that was left over from my son's diaper covers circa 2003-2004 -- my son who is nearly 16 now and towering over me.  I used to pair that diaper cover with different solid colored Hanna Andersson T-shirts (no boring navy/brown/gray wardrobe for my baby boy), so when I look at this block I see a pudgy blond toddler with big, blue eyes...

Back in the Diaper Days: Anders at 11 mos.  Soon to be a Licensed NC Driver!

Can you believe this kid is eligible to get a driver's license next month?!  Yikes!

Me, Lars (18), Bernie, and Anders (15)

My husband is going to take issue with my posting a picture of his hair doing that weird rhinoceros horn thing, but it was windy the day of Lars's high school graduation, we were in a rush (what else is new?), and this was the best family picture we got.  Anyway, with 15 years of gentle care and feeding, 10,000 bed time stories and plenty of love, a pudgy blue-eyed baby in a ladybug bib and psychedelic diaper covers grows into a 5'10" young man.  In the blink of an eye.

Alright, you guys -- the day is wasting away in a puddle of nostalgia.  I've got to get ready for a dentist appointment this afternoon, then select my fabric and supplies for the Karen Kay Buckley workshops I'm taking tomorrow and Friday and pack all of that up, and we have our guild meeting (followed by Karen's lecture) this evening.  

I threw my newly completed FW1930s Block 7 up on the design wall with my other Motley Fools (6" blocks from various sources plus a 12" applique workshop orphan block) and rearranged a bit.  When I first started making the Farmer's Wife blocks I was going for a more muted and traditional color palette, but then I decided to just pull out whatever I felt like playing with for each block and see what happens.  When I decided to mix in the 12' applique workshop block I knew I'd need some darker 6" blocks to tie it in, hence the darker colors in the two blocks I've just finished.  I'm not sure what size blocks we'll be making in Karen's workshops this week, but I'm thinking of adding them to the other Motley Fools.  

Motley Fools On My Design Wall

It's also totally possible that these blocks won't all end up in the same quilt together.  I might separate out the calmer pastels for one quilt and put the Bold, Bright and Bodacious blocks together for something different.  

I'm linking up with:

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

FRIDAY

·      Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·      Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

·      TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday: http://tgiffriday.blogspot.ca/p/hosting-tgiff.html  

Glutton For Punishment: Starting Farmer's Wife 1930s Block No. 7 Augusta

Yes, I've started another of those wretched 6" Farmer's Wife 1930s sampler blocks.  Behold, the beginnings of Block #7, "Augusta."

Oversized Patches Precut for Foundation Paper Piecing

I printed the foundation paper piecing patterns (included on the CD that comes with the book) onto newsprint, colored them, and cut them apart.  I also printed the traditional piecing templates for this block (also on the CD) onto heavy card stock, increased the seam allowance around each template to 1/2", and used them to precut all of my fabric pieces for foundation paper piecing.

Not Sure I'm Wild About That Lighter Purple

This is as far as I've gotten, however, because I'm not sure I'm in love with the companion fabrics I've paired with that wild multicolor print.  And that wild multicolored print is the one fabric I'm not giving up, because I cut those triangles out of scraps that I've been saving for 15 years -- that fabric was one of my favorite diaper covers way back when diaper covers were part of my daily existence.  I don't care if it's ugly because it has MEANING.  Anyway, my idea was to pair it with the solid and nearly-solid purples to tone it down, but I'm not sure that's happening successfully here.  It can be so hard to tell when the pieces are laid out like this.  Keeping in mind that there are 1/2" seam allowances around every fabric patch, it might not look like such a busy mess once I've pieced it together, and you're seeing crisp little squares and triangles of fabric instead of giant blobs, right?

The Neverending Frankenwhiggish Leaves

Anyway, my quilting bee met yesterday and I brought my neverending Frankenwhiggish Rose needleturn appliqué project to work on there.  I'm still working on these blasted leaves.  I think I got three of them needleturned and stitched down during a 3 1/2 hour period.  Insanity!  Well, to be fair, we did spend part of our sewing time taking a tour of our host's longarm quilting studio, and there were breaks for chocolate chip cookie eating.  Anyway, after completing one block in its entirety, I committed to making nine identical blocks, assembly line style.  So now all of the blocks have those triple-layered flower petals, stems, and double-circled centers stitched down, and I'm working on the sixteen little green leaves that go on each block.  I am finding that my "assembly line" plan has a major drawback -- it feels like I'm making zero progress, because as soon as I get the leaves sewn onto one block I pick up another block that looks exactly the same.  It's like the Groundhog Day movie of an applique project -- each day my alarm clock goes off and the previous day's work has disappeared, putting me right back where I started.  Maybe I ought to put these blocks up on my design wall so I can see that progress really is happening?  Or maybe I should take a break from leaves and start working on the reverse appliqué tulips for some of the blocks that already have their leaves.  

On This Block I Did the Tulip First, Then Added Leaves

This project was meant to be a wall quilt for the "keeping room" area that's part of our open kitchen floorplan, with colors pulled from my drapery fabric.  At this rate, I'm going to be sick and tired of those drapes and will have ripped them down and changed all of my colors by the time this quilt is ready to hang.  OR -- we will have to live with those drapes FOREVER after I've wasted invested thousands of hours in hand stitching these blocks...

Majestic Mosaic, 86 x 96 (2014) by Karen Kay Buckley and Renae Haddadin

In other news, I'm incredibly excited that our Charlotte Quilter's Guild is hosting the amazing, internationally recognized, award-winning celebrity quilting wizard Karen Kay Buckley this week.  Woo HOO!!  She's giving a lecture at our guild meeting on Wednesday evening and then teaching two workshops, a hand applique workshop on Thursday and a machine applique workshop on Friday.  After getting up close and personal with Karen's 2015 Paducah Best of Show quilt Majestic Mosaic at the National Quilt Museum back in April, I can't believe that I have the opportunity to take a class with this amazing quilt artist -- I've signed up for both workshops.

Majestic Mosaic Detail, Machine Applique

Look at that detail shot -- would you have guessed the appliqué was stitched by machine?!  I know we all saw this quilt splashed across the covers of magazines when it won Best of Show in 2014, but even professional photos fail to do justice to a masterpiece like this one.  Karen's pattern for making Majestic Mosaic is available on Amazon here.  If she has this pattern for sale at our guild this week, I'm going to buy it even though I have no desire to recreate a lesser version of her quilt -- I really want to know where the blocks begin and end and how she created those cool shaped borders around them.  

Karen's supply list for the machine applique class says "for best results, bring your BEST machine" to class, so I'll be bringing my Goldilocks Bernina 475QE.  

I also got to see Karen's 2013 Best of Show quilt at the museum, Fiesta Mexico.  We'll be making one of the blocks from this quilt in Karen's hand applique workshop on Thursday, and I believe the pattern for making the other blocks is included in our kit fee:

Fiesta Mexico, 85 x 90 (2012), by Karen Kay Buckley and Renae Haddadin

So I have lots more To Dos than Dones for this week:

1. Piece Farmer's Wife Block 7 Augusta
2. Pick out fabrics & gather supplies for Karen Kay Buckley workshops
3. Fire up the longarm machine and do some experimental/practice quilting.  I've scheduled my new-to-me 2013 APQS Millennium for a "spa visit" at the Iowa factory in August, but I'm still vacillating over whether the issues I'm struggling with are due to my lack of experience.  It's EXPENSIVE to have your machine refurbished at APQS but they would replace every possible wear and tear part and and then at least I would know for sure that I wasn't dealing with technical issues that could be improved... 

But NOTHING is getting sewn while I'm sitting here at the computer!  I'm linking up with:

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

·      Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

Rosemary's Baby: Farmer's Wife 1930s, Block No. 88

FW 1930s Block No. 88, "Rosemary's Baby"

I spent a whole hour in my studio a few days ago, just cleaning up the mess from Mission Impossible and last-minute travel wardrobe mending.  I was surprised by how far out of control my workspace had gotten in such a short time from being "too busy and too rushed" to clean up after myself as I went along, but it had gotten to the point where I couldn't even work in there anymore.  All better now -- and so, as a reward to myself, I pulled out the project box with my 6" sampler blocks and decided to make a couple more random, self-indulgent blocks before getting into one of those important quilts that I keep telling everyone I'm prioritizing...  Yes, I know this is why I rarely COMPLETE anything.

The Evil That Is Rosemary's Baby, Back View

Also, can someone please remind me next time that a 6" block containing 53 patches is probably NOT going to be a quick and easy diversion?!  There were some hairy moments, some seam ripping, and a little bit of swearing involved -- and although my block miraculously finished at a pretty precise and square 6 1/2", I am displeased by a couple of seams that did not line up precisely when I sewed the final seams.  This is why MY block is named "Rosemary's Baby," after the 1968 horror movie.  

Prep Work for FW 1930s Block 88 "Rosemary," Foundation Paper Piecing

So this was my beginning prep work for Block #88 "Rosemary" from the book The Farmer's Wife 1930s Sampler Quilt by Laurie Aaron Hird.   

The author pieced her Rosemary block using 4 different fabrics, so step one was to rummage through my stash and select 4 fabrics that played nicely together.  I went with a smallish scale focus print, coordinating olive green and navy blue in dark values, and a light value chartreuse green for the accent fabric.    Next, I colored in the block diagram and scribbled the colors onto my foundation paper piecing templates as well, because when there are this many pieces in a block it is all too easy to get confused about which fabric goes where at the sewing machine.

Then I precut all of my fabric patches, with the correct shape (square, rectangle or HST or QST) as well as the correct grain line (unless I'm fussy cutting, in which case I'm just positioning the print the way I want it to go).

The paper piecing went fine and, thanks to coloring the foundation papers ahead of time, there was no seam ripping due to sewing the wrong fabric in the wrong spot.  The difficulties reared their ugly heads and showed their claws once I got to the part where the various foundation pieced sections needed to be sewn together with traditional piecing.

One of the Tricky Seams

Yes, I was pinning, but still struggled with this one stupid place where I needed a perpendicular seam to align with a seam at a 45 degree angle.  I finally left it be, against the violent objections of every fiber of my being, because there are only so many times you can rip a block apart and sew it back together before it's irreparably frayed and stretched out of shape.  Also, with my particular fabrics, I don't think that the extra time and effort that it would take to get it REALLY perfect would really give me a huge payoff -- your eye just doesn't go there when you look at the block, in my opinion.

The Disappointing Mismatched Seams

Sometimes I get comments from readers who think I'm being hard on myself when I write about these kinds of issues, but it's not about being a hard judge on myself as much as taking a scientific approach -- I want to figure out WHY if something didn't turn out like I expected it to.  That's part of the fun for me, in the strange way that the New York Times crossword puzzles are fun for other people!  In this case, I think I was overly worried because the pieces seemed so small as I was working on the block, and I was afraid that surely I was shrinking them with steam or from bulk building up in all of those seam allowances.  I suspect that I stretched those larger print rectangles (on the diagonal) when I was pressing and starching them.  That would explain why the two seams shifted away from one another.  And I do have a smidge of excess fabric on the yellowish corner squares to trim away, which also supports my stretched rectangle theory.  

So, what's m takeaway?  It would have been handy to have an actual size block diagram to use as a reference while piecing a block this complex, so that as I finished and pressed each subunit I could compare it to the diagram and ensure that each unit was finishing the correct size and shape before joining it to the next piece.  If I remember, I'll try that next time I tackle one of these little monsters.  But I won't be attempting to fix or redo this particular block -- I don't love it that much, and I don't think anyone looking at the finished block would realize that those two seams were necessarily intended to match -- not without my handy little close-up picture with the arrows showing you where the oopses are, anyway!  

The blocks in this Farmer's Wife book get more complex the farther you go through the book.  I'm starting to think that some of the ones like this one that have a ton of pieces are not really worth what a pain in the keyster they are -- I'm not really feeling the payoff, you know what I mean?  Maybe I could have done better with the fabric mix or something.  Perhaps, if I decide to do any of these other really elaborate blocks from her book, I'll resize those blocks to 9" or 12" to make them easier to work with, open up my options with larger scale prints and fussy cutting, and get that mix of block sizes that will let me use the 12" applique block...

In This Case, Done IS Better Than Perfect!

And so, moving on...  Who knows if this motley assortment of blocks will ever amount to anything, anyway!  Except that I just now came up with a good name for these blocks, if they ever do become a quilt.  Behold, my Motley Fools Sampler!

My Motley Fools Sampler Blocks

Although today's Rosemary block and several of the others came from the Farmer's Wife 1930s book, I'm not necessarily committed to making ALL of the blocks in that book.  I've just been making random 6" blocks off and on from fabrics that appeal to me and I'll figure out what to do with them later. I've made some of the blocks from The Farmer's Wife 1930s Sampler Quilt book, some of the blocks from the original Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt book, a couple random 6" blocks from the EQ8 Block Library, and some interesting/challenging vintage blocks that I resized to 6" so I could mix them in with the others.  Then I made that 12" appliqué block in a workshop back in January and decided I might want to mix in some larger blocks with the small ones...  I like the idea of mixing up different block sizes, I enjoyed doing that zany colored appliqué block and I would like to mix in some more like that.    Maybe some sashing and maybe some borders; I'll figure that out later.  For now, I'm just having fun treating each 6" block like its own special creation and then tossing it up on the wall to see what it looks like with the others once it's finished!  

I have another sampler block picked out from the Farmer's Wife 1930s book on my agenda but it has far fewer pieces and should go together in a snap for me tomorrow.  

SO...  My To-Do for Tuesday is to finish that other 6" sampler block, pack this project away again, and then get busy with at least ONE of the following WIPs:

• The obscenely overdue Modern Baby Clam Shell quilt, which needs all of the turquoise patches out and then to be pieced
• Spend some time with the longarm machine, trouble-shooting and finishing up some of the class samples from the Paducah workshops I took back in April
• Prep some more applique for hand stitching at my bee meeting next Monday

Meanwhile, I'm linking up with:

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

·      Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·      Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

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To all of my American readers, enjoy a happy and safe Independence Day holiday!

VICTORY! FW1930s Block 88 "Prudence," Second-Try Success

FW1930s Block 88, Prudence

Second time's the charm!  I am SO glad to be finished with the Pernicious Prudence block.  I set my first awful attempt aside, the one I was trying to save with EPP, and started over on this block.  I found several tutorials online from other quilters who had simplified the block construction by adding seams in various places, but I really wanted to challenge myself to make the block exactly as it appears in he book. 

This time around, I precut ALL of my shapes using the templates printed off the CD, but with seam allowances enlarged to 3/8".  I was more careful with my FPP to be sure that my fabric pieces completely covered the foundation papers, and one thing that made a huge difference was that this time I did not sew through any of the seam allowances of any of the angled or Y-seams.  I marked my foundations with a little red "X" to remind myself where I had to start right on the seam intersection, and backstitched those seams.  That made it MUCH easier to precisely align the raw fabric edges on the wonky crooked seam lines, because each seam allowance became a little "hinge" where I could pivot the fabric. 

I also was more careful in trimming the seam allowances of each completed foundation paper segment this time.  I always trim the block segments with my ruler and rotary cutter, laying the 1/4" ruler line right on top of the seam line on the foundation pattern, and then slicing next to the ruler edge rather than trimming the segments to size by cutting along the dotted line with a scissor.  Well, this is not an easy feat when you have pieces with inside angles like with this Prudence block.  In my first attempt, I just cut those inside corners on the dotted line.  But on my second, more successful go, I opened the loose seam allowances up at those corners and cut the fabric straight at the overlaps so the raw edges at the crucial intersections would be straight and flush.  I should have taken a picture to explain this better, but my phone was playing music from the stereo in the other room...  So, no pictures from those stages.

Lots of Seams Pressed Open in Prudence Block

I pressed the center seams open on the center octagon as well as the side triangles to reduce bulk: 

Center Seam on Side Triangle Sections Pressed Open to Reduce Bulk Around Octagon

Everything comes along nicely in this block right up until this point, when you realize that you have to sew the big corner sections to the center thingy that is shaped like a vintage Christmas ornament: 

Prudence's Point of No Return

Yikes, right?!  But this time, it wasn't that bad.  Tedious and time-consuming, but actually POSSIBLE.  I stitched one side to the center completely by machine, one little straight edge at a time, pinning and backstitching and clipping, then pivoting, pinning, backstitching, and clipping again.  On the second side, I decided it would be faster AND more accurate to stitch the seams around the octagon by hand, so that's what I did. 

Hand Stitching Around Octagon for Greater Control

I just drew my 1/4" seamline in chalk from the start of one seam to the beginning of the next, and backstitched along the chalk line.  It's easier to keep your seam allowances out of the way when stitching by hand than when you have to flatten everything and fold the rest of the block out of the way so you can stitch these itty bitty angled seams by machine.  Once I had the seam around the octagon completely stitched all the way around, it wasn't a big deal to machine stitch the rest of that seam alongside the skinny red triangles and then closing the green corners of the block.

So Prudence is done.  She's not perfect, but she's pretty accurate considering what a pain the in the arse she was.  And best of all, she measures precisely 6 1/2".  I'm calling it a win.

Prudence Finished at 6 1/2" Square

I did the foundation paper piecing of this block on my Bernina 750QE with 9 mm Patchwork foot 97D, because I love the bright lights and auto knotting features for sewing right down those FPP lines and it's so easy to center the stitching line between the narrow open toe area on that foot.  Then, after trimming the completed FPP sections and removing the papers, I finished piecing the blocks on my 1934 Featherweight with my vintage Singer Cloth Guide screwed into the machine bed at 1/4" from the needle and the original multipurpose foot that came on that machine.  I really prefer my Featherweight for Y-seams because the computerized Bernina sometimes takes an unpredictable extra stitch in the wrong direction when I press the reverse button.  The all-mechanical Featherweight immediately changes direction when I flip the lever up or down, so every stitch is controlled as precisely as if I was stitching by hand.  I also love the narrow feed dogs of the Featherweight for piecing.  It took some measuring and fiddling to get that seam guide attached at exactly the right distance from the needle, so I just leave it on the machine.  That's the other reason I'm doing the FPP part on my Bernina, so I don't have to remove the seam guide from my Featherweight.

Here's my collection of 6" sampler blocks so far, from The Farmer's Wife, Farmer's Wife 1930s, and Charise's Vintage Block Quilt Along:

Completed 6" Sampler Blocks

I'm linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Can I Get A Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and then I'm headed out for a belated birthday girls' night in celebration of my good friend and theatre sister (yes, that's a Thing).  Happy Thursday!

Farmer's Wife 1930s FAIL: Block 88, Pernicious Prudence

Great Expectations: FW1930s Block 88 "Prudence" Precut and Ready to Piece

Well, not every post can feature a smashing success.  Farmer's Wife 1930s Block 88 "Prudence" is an evil beast, and I think I'm going to have to trash this attempt and start over.  I hope I have enough of that green and blue floral fabric, because I really love how these three fabrics play together for this block.

I attempted to piece this block using the foundation paper piecing pattern on the CD that came with the Farmer's Wife 1930s book.  As you see in the photo above, there are a LOT of little fabric patches to piece to the foundation papers, which is time consuming but not a big deal.  The trouble came when I was ready to attach those segments together to complete the block, and it's two seams that each have EIGHT angles to contend with -- the beast of all Y seams.  It's not a Y-seam, or even a W-seam; it's a zigzag seam. 

To make matters worse, I made a bad decision when I was piecing those skinny outer triangles.  I realized after stitching two of them to the foundation paper that the red rectangular scraps I'd selected out of thrift were slightly too small, leaving a less-than-full seam allowance on the wide end of the triangle.  I decided that this would be okay and I would just make the adjustment when I sewed it to the next unit, not realizing that the skimpy seam allowance right where the triangle bottom adjoined the pieced octagon in the center would make it IMPOSSIBLE for me to align my pieces properly.  I tried, failed, carefully ripped out the stitches and weighed my options.

Wicked Final Block Seams

See what I mean?  And the red triangle piece has part of its seam allowance missing so I couldn't match up raw fabric edges at that crucial center of the octagon.  Once again, as usual, being too lazy to rip out and redo ONE seam resulted in MANY wasted hours, MANY wasted seams, and wasted fabric as well!

Ready to Attempt EPP (note wretched, ragged, skimpy red seam allowances in center)

Having nothing to lose, I decided to try an EPP (English Paper Piecing) experiment.  I printed the block diagram onto cardstock at actual size, and carefully cut it apart on the seam lines between my foundation segments.  Then I basted my pieced block segments onto the cardstock directly through every seam intersection that I had already pieced (see hot pink thread going across the middle of the segments in the photo above) to make sure that everything was perfectly aligned.  And then I wrapped the seam allowances around the edges of the cardstock templates, trying to eyeball as I went to keep a quarter inch seam allowance around the outside edges of the block.  Ugh.  If I had done the whole block EPP, or had known I was going to finish it with EPP, I would have oversized those outer seam allowances so I could trim the block down to a perfect 6 1/2" when I was finished, but too late now.

Front View, Ready to EPP

It looked good from the front, right?  I was optimistic at this point -- and really loving my fabric combinations.  I should 'fess up right now and tell you that I've never actually done ANY EPP before, only read about it in books and blog tutorials.  So I have a theoretical knowledge of how it's done, but no practical experience.

I did it wrong.  I used a couple of those Wonder Clips to hold two sections together along the inside seam allowance with wrong sides together, and whip-stitched the abutted edges with the same cream colored cotton thread I've been using to piece the blocks by machine.  I tried to take tiny stitches and place them close together, especially since that red patch had such a skimpy seam allowance.  Then I opened up what I had done and saw GIANT IVORY STITCHES all over the place on the right side of my block.  YUCKY!

Ugly Stitches!

I went online and googled "invisible EPP stitches," and found a tutorial recommending that you stitch the EPP together with the pieces laid flat and stitch them from the back side, and when I tried doing it that way I DID get invisible stitches: 

When I Stitched From the Back This Way, Stitches were Invisible on the Right Side of the Block

Flat-Stitched Area from Right Side Invisible, But Wonky Corner :-(

I don't know whether I can remove those first ugly stitches safely, and there were a LOT of them.  I also am not thrilled with the way a couple of those corners got ever-so-slightly rounded when I pulled the fabric taut around the card stock corner -- see that one really bad one in the photo above.  Do I really want to put in the time to stitch the rest of this together by hand when I know it isn't going to be a perfect block in the end anyway?

I really love the crisp, sharp corners and perfectly matched seam intersections that I've been getting with foundation paper piecing on all of my other blocks.  So I think this block needs to be a total Do-Over.  Fortunately, the amazing Charise of Charise Creates came up with a much better way to foundation piece this block to avoid that final wicked zigzag seam:

Charise's Brilliant and "Prudent" Solution, via Charise Creates here

See how she separated the triangles that form the center octagon and attached them to the side triangular sections first, so she ends up with a much more friendly seam to sew when she attaches the segments at the end?  See her complete tutorial on her blog here.  I wish I had seen this BEFORE I started my Prudence block!

This is why I love the Internet.  First of all, it was nice to go online and find that those who are far more skilled and experienced piecers than I am consider Prudence to be one of the most difficult blocks in the entire book.  That made me feel better about having trouble with it.  Second, of course, I love that I found Charise's alternate construction method for this block.  That encourages me to give it another go.  I just hope I have enough of these fabrics left!

I'm linking up with Moving It Forward at Em's Scrap Bag, even though this was kind of a two steps forward, one step back kind of post, and with Esther's WIPs On Wednesday.

I'm taking Son the Younger to the dentist now for his Bi-Annual Dental Hygiene Shaming.  But this afternoon, I'm going back in that sewing room to try, try again.  Happy Monday, everyone!