Oh, halle-fricking-lujah.  The half-square triangles are done.  My order of Kona Bone arrived, I got the FINAL eight pairs completed.

422 half-square triangle units, each at 4.5″ square (unfinished).  It only took three and a half months. Ha.

I hope to start piecing the big blocks this week, but I’ve got a couple of other projects ongoing, so we’ll just have to see how it goes.  On the one hand, I feel like I need a break from these blocks.  On the other, I don’t want to have these disappear in the black hole of the to-do list, and I’m looking forward to seeing them turn into something real.

We shall see.

For. The. Love.

I made 35 pairs this week. THIRTY-FIVE!

And yet. Still eight more to go.  I was cutting that last bit of Kona Bone for the background, and would you believe I was TWO INCHES SHORT for that final strip?  Many curse words followed.  None of my local fabric sources had any in stock.  So it’s on order, UPS man will be dropping it off soon.

Oy.

In the meantime, I think I’ve decided how I’m actually going to put these together into a real quilt.  I was originally thinking about going incredibly simple, just stringing rows together, like a very large and multicolored version of this layout by fellow quilt-along-er tubakk.

But I think I’ve changed my mind.  In part because I decided the monotony of stringing that many rows together would destroy what few shreds of sanity I have remaining.  So I think I’m going to do a variation of this tutorial from Quiltstory.

That is, if it doesn’t get instantly buried at the bottom of my to-do list, under a pile of new-baby quilts…

Yeah. I’m still here. Still making triangles. The end is in sight, I swear.

Had a few urgent projects and a week away from the sewing machine, so I only managed 16 pairs since I last posted two weeks ago. 32 more blocks brings me to 336.

We’re in the midst of Snowpocalypse here in New England, but thankfully the snowblower is working and the power has stayed on.  So the worst I can say is that we’ll be getting a little cabin fever. No biggie.

Plus, I am very happy to report, my sewing room is blessedly holding up to the cold and wind.  It’s an un-heated, un-inuslated sunroom sticking out from the side of my house.  While it certainly gets chilly, it warms up to a reasonable temperature once I leave the french doors open for a few minutes.  I’m sure that’s terribly energy inefficient and it’s sucking heat from the rest of the house, so I try to remember to close the doors when I’m not in there.  But I’m glad I don’t have to stop sewing when it’s cold, or drag my stuff out and clutter my (already disastrous) dining room.

Hunkering down. Finishing the triangles this week and moving on to my long list of new baby blankets.  I swear.

You know, I’m awfully glad I did this project publicly on the blog, and as a quilt-along.  Even if nobody else is still sewing, I feel that little bit of extra pressure to see this all the way through.  If I didn’t, I think I would have thrown up my hands and abandoned the project, because damn do I want to be done making these blocks.  I feel like the guy in the old Dunkin Donuts ads, gloomily trudging into my sewing room, saying “time to make the triangles…”

OK, that’s being way over-dramatic.  It’s not really all that bad, the blocks do come together so quickly.  I just can’t believe I’m STILL making them.

This week, I made 16 more pairs to finish off my stack of blue.  That makes 32 more blocks, for a total of 314.  Lord, this quilt is going to be so much bigger than I thought.

I then grabbed my final two scrap boxes.  One is purples and anything multicolored that isn’t easily categorized, and one is browns, blacks, and grays.  I pulled out all of the fabrics big enough to cut a 5″ square and piled ‘em up.  Oh, look!  Only…

Oh, holy hell. That’s nearly 60 more fabrics.  Who knew there even WERE so many damn fabrics, much less that I owned that many!  That’s going to bring my ultimate total to well-over 400 blocks.  This is going to be a twin-sized quilt.  Holy crap, people.

Alright. Focus.  I can do this. I can make these blocks.  I’ve got some holiday projects to finish up this week, but I can fit in a few batches of triangles.  Then I’ll be away for the week after that, but still almost a full week left in December when I get back.

New goal: FINISH THE BLOCKS BY THE END OF THE YEAR.

Oh yes. I have thrown down the gauntlet.  I WILL DO IT!

Anyone else still out there?  Can you tell I bit off a bigger project than I imagined? Ha!

OK, this week the triangles got kind of out of control.

I made 25 pair for this project, getting more than halfway through my stack of blues. 50 more blocks gets my total to 282 blocks.

But that was not all, oh no, that was not all.

With my spate of pregnant friends, and due dates approaching much more rapidly than I thought possible, I thought I’d get a start on some baby quilts.  In trying to be at least a little bit efficient, I realized I had fabric already cut and ready to be a great baby boy quilt.  Amusing to me that, when I first cut the squares, I thought I might fall a few weeks behind.  If, by “a few weeks,” I meant “nearly a year and a half.”  Anyways, it’s made up of even more half-square triangles, which start from 5″ squares.  If I counted up all of those, that’d probably add another 40 or so blocks to this week’s total.  It’s triangle insanity up in here!

I’m burning out on these blocks, that’s for damn sure.  But I’m close enough to the end (both of the baby quilt top and of the blocks for this project), that I should be able to push on through.  After this, though, no more triangles for a while…  Whew.

How are you doing, triangle friends?  Do you have any more gas left in the tank for these blocks? Are you nearing the end, or just burning out?