Although I love the way that snowball blocks look in finished quilts, I'm not all that excited about piecing them. My latest pet project needed eighty.

Eighty is a lot of something you don't really want to piece. The corners snag on my quarter inch foot. But if I use the foot that doesn't snag, I can't alternate the corners with other things. But, as of tonight, I don't have to worry about that until I decide to make another quilt with snowballs.

Because my eighty blocks are done. Now I've got to piece together about seven hundred little 2 1/2" squares to make the sashing that goes between the snowballs. Sound like excellent leaders and enders to anyone else?

I laid a few out to see if it was really going to look anything like I had pictured in my mind. Controlled scrappy quilts still make me a bit nervous, especially when I have firm ideas about how I want them to turn out.

I think I've got what I wanted --



And I know I've got what I wanted here --



Last night, I cut the last of the fabric for my Bento Box and got the lights and darks paired together. Tonight, I sewed the last twenty blocks. And, given my recent track record, I had to lay them all out to reassure myself that I'd counted right and that I really did have all sixty-four.

I'm torn between the urge to assemble the top right now and getting it quilted as soon as humanly possible and my reluctance to sew the blocks together because then the layout will be permanent and there's no more shifting things around. I'm also not sure what I want to back it with. Unlike most of my other quilts, this one is mostly quilt shop fabric. Maybe I should try to find some nice (and affordable) fabric for the back.