Oh boy! A whole block of HSTs. Just looking at the pattern this week has made me break out into a bit of a sweat. It turns out the sweat was probably a bit warranted.

Block 3 was designed by Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic and is called Affection. I know the joke has been made in the Sewcialites group on Facebook already, but I'm going to go ahead and make it myself. I do NOT have much affection for this block. I appreciate what I learned from it, and I'll happily carry those skills with me as I continue quilting, but I certainly do not feel any kindness, goodwill, devotion, or friendship with this block. (Yes, I looked up synonyms for affection. The thesaurus has long been my friend both at work and in the outside world.)

The block is rated as experienced, and yes, yes, that is an accurate rating. It is not for the faint of heart. How tough can it be, it's a bunch of HSTs, and if you have triangle paper, they're practically already made? Well, kind reader, let me tell you, there are all kinds of ways this block can go awry. I did fine making the individual HSTs, but once I started piecing the block together, that's where things got a little dicey.

Matching the corners correctly when attaching the strips of HSTs to the larger HST caused me a bit of a fit, particularly one corner (I’m sure you can see it…it’s right there). I used my seam ripper three times, and it's still not perfect, but if I fiddled with it any further, it wasn't going to end well. There were several places I had to ease the strip in, and even then, there are places where it's not as good as I'd like it to be. It is likely my perfectionism speaking since it's pretty darn close to 6.5" and looks like the picture, especially from a distance. Overall, I'm okay with the block and look forward to the challenge of next week's.