Last Tuesday, “I Wish You a Merry Quilt-A-Long” released two new blocks!  I thought it would just be one every other week, but not this time.

The first was a pieced block, Santa’s Belt.  Looked cute but I didn’t have large enough pieces of red fabric!  What?  I ordered a fat quarter bundle just so I’d have every color possible.

No Red! Did I already use it? Maybe.

And it didn’t have any red!  There is a burgundy.  But I really want RED!  And not a print–this quilt will be made of all solid colors.

As I’ve complained about numerous times, the quilt shop in Crystal River closed.  I didn’t think I had enough time to get the block done before today if I ordered fabric online.  So off to Jo-anne’s I went on Monday.  That’s about a 30 minute drive.  I usually don’t use the quilting fabric from Jo-anne’s because I’ve turned into a quilting snob.  Only the best designer stuff will do!  But this time I thought I’d buy some of their “premium quilting fabric”.  But. They didn’t have any red, either!

So, I thought, I’ll just run to the Brooksville quilt shop on Wednesday–about 45 minutes away.  But then….

Hurricane Irma decided to turn towards Florida.  And the entire state went into panic mode.

There is no gas at the stations.  No bottled water in the stores. Lines of cars waiting for sand bags. Traffic is crawling.  I did get into Tractor Supply to get Maggie some dog food–not that she’ll eat it.  Not going to Brooksville in that mess!

So……still no red fabric.

On to the fourth block–Christmas Memories.

An applique!  Yeah!  Well, that’s what I thought at first.

But when I got ready to select fabric, my brain just shut down.

First thing I should have done was pick out a color theme for this quilt rather than blindly pulling different fabrics out. In my defense, I have no idea what any of these blocks will look like until they are released. I finally just decided to go with the colors I had already used and add a few more.  The first block was red and white, then there were those metallic Christmas trees with brown trunks.  Santa’s belt is black. And I picked green because that’s a Christmasy color.  Red, White, Silver, three shades of gold, brown, black, and green.  That should be easy, right?

Then the Heat n’ Bond Lite did not stick to the silver metallic fabric very well.  Whether I had a bad piece of glue paper or if this is truly a problem, I don’t know.  When I do the final quilting on this block I think I’ll do a bunch of stitches in the silver bits.  Just to make sure it sticks!

I thought everything was going well in my cutting and pressing until I realized that at the very very very last step I had put the bulb caps on upside down.  Scheesch!  Too late to peel them off.  Once they are pressed, they are permanent!

But, it’s still pretty.  As usual, perfectly imperfect!

Another block comes out on Tuesday.  The hurricane, wherever if lands, will have caused it’s devastation by then.  Think I’ll just order the red fabric online–hope I have a house to have it delivered to!