The Tattoo quilt, block 5 —

 Grace — a topic near and dear to me.

Grace is one of those things that means a lot to some people, including myself. Prevenient grace was something I knew nothing about prior to my baptism, but embraced post-conversion. The older I get, the more I practice giving grace to others; and now I’m trying to give myself more grace—it’s easier now than it was earlier in my life. 

While Grace in this context may not be what the pattern designer meant when she designed this block, it’s how I’m seeing it. While a swan may be seen as graceful, I think more of how we go through this life and our treatment of others. 

Grace can also be thought of as having the patience to work through a block that has 174 pieces. 

My mind went into overthinking, as always, when I remembered how long it took me to cut the pieces in the Fury block, which was fewer than the pieces in the Grace block. After cutting the sections for this block, I measured a square or rectangle around every section piece, and entered it into a spreadsheet. I then sorted the sections by fabric and dimension size. I created cutting and sub-cutting instructions. It’s possible I spent as much time doing that as I would have just cutting as I have been, but I think of it as a good exercise for my brain and may do it again for at least 2 more blocks that have more pieces than this block. 

Another thing about the cutting—the first four blocks I would cut the fabric pieces in the same shape as the area to be sewn was; I.e., triangle, trapezoid, etc. I ran into problems with some of those pieces. For this block, I limited all pieces to squares or rectangles. It uses a skosh more fabric, but it’s worth it to have a little extra fabric to manipulate when that seam line is at an acute angle. 

Another thought about grace—when scrolling through my Facebook feed one morning, I read comments on a post about red, white and blue quilts in a quilting group. There were a few quilts posted with depictions of the American flag, and a group member posted that the quilter’s positioning of the flag was improper and disrespectful to the flag—and posted that comment on every quilt where she saw the flag’s orientation in a different position than what is considered proper flag etiquette. 

I completely respect our flag—I am the proud daughter of a career Marine, I know the proper handling and storage of a flag, and this old Girl Scout knows how to properly fold and also hang a flag—but I’ll be damned if I’m going to tell a quilter that she or he was wrong for how she or he positioned the flag in a quilt. 

Thank goodness I also know how to scroll past a hater’s post. That’s grace (on a very small scale).

I practice a lot of small-scale grace while scrolling through social media.

Back to Grace, the block—the day after creating the spreadsheet, I went into the cutting room at 12:15pm and had all pieces cut by 4:10pm—just under 4 hours. That included a couple of short breaks. I was extremely happy about it and I have already created the spreadsheets for the next two blocks.

The next day I got to The Beast and was cleaning the area around it—I almost threw away a tiny piece of paper—luckily I flipped it over—it was Section EE. I had a scrap of fabric that would work for it. 

And for this block, I quit pinning. All of the previous blocks, I pinned the sections together before sewing the seam. This time, I just lined the sections up and had a better time of it. I’m still basting the longer seams, but I did not have to rip any seam and I’m extremely happy about it.

A reminder to me that it is not a race...

The swan head was so fiddly but thanks to basting, I got it in one take!

About Y-seams--The pattern designer explains her method for each block that requires a Y-seam; I found it very helpful. While I didn't follow her method exactly for the Grace block, I did follow her order for each Y-seam and it was a very satisfying sew! 

The seam includes two Y-seams; this is after the first part of sewing the top of the swan to the center portion of the "Grace" banner. The other two portions were the left ("G") and right lily pad and banner end sections.

I do have a mistake that I left in. Let me know if you see it.

I am halfway through the 10 blocks that surround the center panel. I can honestly say that I am enjoying this journey and, maybe, I will make another. 

And, overthinking went into overdrive.  I’ll talk about it in the next block post. In the meantime, go make!