I’m happy to report that I wound up with 21 4-patch kaleidoscope blocks, of which 20 are  needed for my current Work-in-Progress based on the pattern Dandelions at Dusk by Blue Bear Quilts. You will remember I started with these two test blocks:

Because I didn’t have extra focus fabric to play with, many of my blocks share the same floral element so I arranged them accordingly to get a better look:

(I have a piece of flannel draped over the door to my sewing room for a narrow but easily accessible design wall.  My big design wall is across the hall in the room I call the Annex.)

Satisfied that there’s enough variety in the blocks, I laid them out in the 4 x 5 grid called for in the pattern. After moving individual blocks around over the course of a few days, I settled on this layout:

When it comes time to sew the finished blocks together, each four-patch kaleido unit will be positioned in one of four corners of the finished block — upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right. (Take another look at the first photo in this post and you’ll see what I mean.)

But what about that 21st block, the one that didn’t make the cut? Here it is:

Most likely it will end up on the back of the quilt.

Now it’s time to move on to the other block components — the half-square triangles and the units with sashing strips. I’m off to my sewing room to do some rotary cutting. Thanks for stopping by!

Here are the two test blocks for my newest project, using the pattern Dandelions at Dusk by Blue Bear Quilts as my jumping off point:

Take a look at the pattern cover of Dandelions at Dusk to get a sense of how my test blocks would fit into the over-all design:

I love the look of my test blocks and think they would work beautifully in the quilt design but alas, I fear I may have boxed myself into a corner. You see, there are a couple of things I failed to take into consideration when I started cutting and sewing my test blocks.

Both have to do with my focus fabric, identified in my last post as “Jolie Jardin” by the now defunct Lakehouse Fabrics. I had used a chunk of this fabric years ago in a quilt but hadn’t bothered to check how much actual yardage I had left to make the 20 blocks needed for this quilt. Turns out I had quite a bit less than I thought.

Each four-patch kaleidoscope block is made up of four 4″ squares. The finished blocks measure 7½” square unfinished, 7″ square finished. I need 20 of them. After carefully measuring my fabric today, I was able to determine that I should be able to eke out 21 blocks (meaning I have only one to spare) if — and only if — I don’t make a single cutting error. No pressure, right?

The method of making four-patch kaleidoscope blocks is to stack four repeats of fabric on top of each other, pin the repeats very carefully to keep the design elements perfectly aligned, and then very carefully cut the fabric into squares. Here comes the second issue: the repeat of this fabric is not 12″ as I was expecting. The repeat is actually 11⅞” — meaning I have to cut my squares a smidge short of 4″ in order to eke out the number of squares needed.

The only thing to do is dive into the deep end. I’ll go ahead and stack my repeats and cut my squares and see what the resulting blocks look like. Assuming I have enough blocks with enough variety, I’ll soldier on with the quilt. The worst that can happen is I’ll wind up with four-patch kaleido blocks that won’t work for this quilt but will work for another one.

Finally, a finish to report: Berried Treasure, the quilt I started at the beginning of this year:

You can read my first post about it here.

Have a look at the back:

As you can see, I made my trademark round label using a compact disc as a pattern and added a contrasting ring of the bright blue tonal fabric:

A close-up of said label:

Even though I used the “natural light” function on my camera phone to take the indoor pictures you see above, there’s no substitute for the real thing to capture the true colors in the fabrics:

Berried Treasure measures 68″ x 81″ but will shrink a bit after being laundered. After being dragged around the back deck, it definitely needs a trip through the washer and dryer.

Given that today is the first of June, I hope to be more productive during the remaining months of 2025. My mind is already racing with possibilities for my next project.

Happy Friday! I have two causes to celebrate today:

Number one: I’ve completed the top of Berried Treasure, based on my own 4-Patch Wonder pattern. The Dear Husband obliged by taking this photo of me with the top late this afternoon:

The top measures 69″ x 83″ at the moment. I made an error in calculating the length of strips for the outer borders. They’ll still finish at a generous six inches wide but the quilt will be a couple inches smaller all around than its fraternal twin Framboise, made years ago with the same focus fabric in a different colorway.

Number two: The DH and I are celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary today — woohoo! We just returned from a lovely dinner at A Cena, one of our favorite restaurants in Portland.

It’s been a good day!

Here’s a peek at the first mitered corner on my current WIP (work-in-progress):

The inner border finishes at 1/2 inch and the second one at one inch. The inch-wide border is one of several pieces I have in my stash of “Spin Dot,” a lovely blender by Timeless Treasures Fabrics. It’s from the same line as the royal blue blender I used in the corner and side triangles (as well as the 12 inner blocks you can see in this post from Feb. 23).

You may not be able to see from the photo above that the blue border is lightly metallic. Normally I would have chosen a bolder fabric but nothing in my stash seemed just right and I felt that the pearlized effect would complement the luminous light blues in the focus fabric.

My first mitered corner went together beautifully. Let us hope the remaining three do as well!

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. I even posted an entry on March 16 that mysteriously vanished along with its comments after I had agreed to a month of website design services – for a fee, or course — provided by my website host, GoDaddy.com.

Here’s the backstory:

In late February I notified GoDaddy that some of my readers reported they couldn’t leave comments on my blog posts, and my latest post wasn’t showing up unless I rebooted my computer. GoDaddy convinced me to pay for a month of website design services to address these issues and make my website even better. Much to my dismay, the marketing team introduced a series of errors in the appearance of my website, including extra spaces between blog titles and text, missing spaces between words in random blog posts, and weirdly enlarged and cropped photos replacing my standard logo at the top of every page and post.

At the end of the month of so-called design services, my blog was back to its previous normal look – but the blog post of March 16 and its comments were still missing, despite my repeated requests to GoDaddy to restore them. The comments on my post of Feb. 23 also mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

When GoDaddy emailed me on March 27 that “we’ve completed your request,” I immediately responded that it had NOT been completed and I wanted the missing blog post restored. This is the message I got in response: “Thank you for reaching out to us. Your email has been received and will be responded to on a first-come-first-serve basis.” That was well over a week ago. As you can imagine, I’m not holding my breath waiting for a response.

So what was in that March 16 post that disappeared? It was titled “Website Woes” and included a brief description of what was happening to my website posts. It also included a photo of my current Work in Progress, Berried Treasure, taken after the blocks were sewn into rows, the rows joined, and the setting triangles added. Take a look:

Yesterday was the first time in weeks that I’ve spent a significant amount of time in my sewing room. I’m working now on the borders (three of them) for Berried Treasure and should have something to show you very soon.