Another Block Finished for Beware the Ishmaelites Sampler

Happy Friday, friends!  I'm still quilting away on my Spirit Song quilt, probably about 40% of the way finished with the final background quilting, but there's nothing new to show on that front.  However, I did make another block for my son Anders' bed quilt yesterday:

This 15" block is the fifth one, and the easiest BY FAR of the blocks I've completed for this sampler quilt, my convoluted and overcomplicated version of the Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler from a few years ago.  I foundation paper pieced the corner units and then pieced the rest of it the "old fashioned" way.  
Here it is on my design wall along with the others (which are overlapped to conserve space):

I almost cropped my iron out of that picture, but left it in at the last minute as a scale reference.  

It was nice to move back and forth yesterday between my long arm quilting and a bit of piecing for a change.  Quilting the same designs over and over again throughout a quilt can get mighty boring!

I'm making the biggest blocks first and working my way smaller to conserve fabric, and I am glad the ginormous blocks are finished.  They were more challenging to make than i'd expected, because my weird block sizes necessitate a combination of foundation paper piecing, rotary cutting, and template piecing, but the foundation patterns were too big for an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of newsprint and had to be taped together.  Same thing with my card stock templates for those giant green triangles.  Sometimes, smaller blocks are actually easier!

I have started printing foundation patterns, card stock templates, and even cutting some of the fabrics for several other blocks in this quilt, but I made a last minute change to one of the yellow shades in the quilt and I'm waiting for that fabric to show up before I can start on any of those.  

Another recent revision to this design was that I went back and redrafted the three chevron/zigzag blocks to add Y-seams.  Those blocks are made from flying geese units in the original quilt, but I wanted to make them from diamonds instead for a couple of reasons.  First, I always prefer to have the absolute minimum number of seams in a block for a cleaner look to the design, and to reduce seam allowance bulk in my quilt tops.  Second, I have found that it's difficult to join those flying geese units together without loosing the points.  Making those blocks from diamonds with a couple of Y-seams is going to make it easier for me to get nice, sharp points on those triangles on the first try.

Now that the purple 15" block is done, I think I'll turn my attention to either the black and lime green block at center left or the orange X block in the upper left corner.

Meanwhile, back to my quilting!

I'm linking up today's post with:

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FRIDAY

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

·       Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

·       Finished Or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

·       Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

SATURDAY

·       UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland