When I saw the pattern for this block I was sure I was never going to get it to work. Look at all those matching points and seams! No way, not even with paper piecing! To my surprise, and to the credit of block designer Janice Ryan, it came out great. Not everything matches up perfectly, but unless you look closely it’s not that noticeable.

Of course then I wanted to not ruin it with poor quilting… so I set it aside and looked at it day after day while trying to decide what to do. In the end, I went with a simple mix of echoing some of the shapes and stitching in the ditch for others so as not to destroy the pattern. This block has great texture and I wanted the quilting to enhance that. I left some of the patches entirely alone so that they would stay a little puffy (the peach triangles and the red and white print). The narrow echoing on the red diagonal stripes helps to make the ones I left alone stand out while still giving the block some structure.

I finished by stitching in the ditch around the edges. I’m very pleased with the final result!

Family Affair is block 15 of the first Splendid Sampler and was designed by Janice Ryan.