Crown of Thorns

Making this block tonight brought me back almost 20 years.  I was waiting for my husband to get finished with college so we could get married, and I wanted to make a special quilt for our "someday" home. I had decided to make the Crown of Thorns block, 20 of them in fact, with a purple and cream color scheme.  I cut each block out by pinning the pattern to the fabric and cutting around it with a scissors.  Sad, but true.

Tonight's block (number 108 of 366) went together easily, I had it cut out and pieced in about a half an hour.  I remember how it took me so long to piece those blocks way back when I was new to quilting and really struggling with them.  I wanted so badly to have a beautifully pieced and finished quilt done and saved away.  Well, I saved the blocks away and I dug them out tonight...all nine of them.  The pieces for the other eleven blocks are in my sewing basket just ready and waiting to be sewn together.  After digging out the blocks tonight I realized why I never finished them, and just looking at them tells a story of a very young new quilter who was working way above her skill level and struggling.  I obviously didn't have a very good sewing machine, and I needed to figure out how to use a rotary cutter.

This is one of the better 20-year-old blocks.  The "old" one is a 12-inch block and the "new" block is 10 inches.  Something I guess I realized tonight is just how far I've come, that after 20+ years of doing all of this there is still so much to learn, and to never give up.  Happy Stitching!!  --Kristen