I have always wanted to make a Storm at Sea quilt of my own.  I made one for my sister and her husband as a wedding present, 14 years ago. (Wow, where does the time go?)  It was foundation paper pieced, and scrappy.   My SAS quilt is red and white, well Barn red and Snow white to be a little more specific.  I started out making 9″ blocks, for a 64 block quilt.  I made all my half rectangles, and realized that while following the directions I had moved one “box” over in the grid of how many/what size sub blocks I needed.  I had made the rectangles for the 12″ block.  Okay, deep breath.  I’ll just make the bigger blocks and less of them, 49, an 84″ square quilt.  I had enough fabric, so that was a plus.  I plugged on making lots of units, in that mindless chain piecing way, 154 of this 49 of that, red and white.  To make it interesting, I changed threads so that the red fabric had red thread and the white had white.  Thats pretty sad, but true.  Thankfully I have a good audio book to listen to.  When I had enough pieces done I laid them out on my table to see how they looked.  Hmm.  Something was not quite right.  The pattern wasn’t a true SAS block.  There was no square within a square within a square in the block. The designer had replaced it with a solid square.  The secondary wavy illusion wasn’t there. It was okay looking, but more of a star quilt.  If you look in the upper right hand side of the picture, you’ll see the block.

After looking at many other SAS blocks, I ended up drafting a new Square in a square in a square block to fit with all my finished pieces.  Now my block looks like this, not the star as on the pattern.

I think the pattern maker was trying to make it easier to put together, or simpler, or I just like making double work for myself.  I like secondary patterns in quilts.  Hope to get this together this week.

Inking up with Judy at Patchwork Times for design wall Monday.