The Pine Burr, also called Pine Cone, is one of the traditional black quilt blocks. One of the famous examples is Mary Alan Smith from Arkansas. I've wanted to try one for a long time, but wasn't feeling it until this project. Incorporating a burr into this piece would bring drama! Excitement! 3-D!
What you do is make a bunch of tiny squares (ignore the stains..that's just dried blood from an Incident years ago...this pic was when the cover for the little ironing board was in the washing pile)
turn them into tiny triangles,
and stack them ragged
Normally you'd start from the center and work your way out. But because I was making an edging for an existing space, and not a stand-alone block, I started a couple of inches in and worked my way out.
It worked great! Right up until I was finished and realized that while it was dramatic and 3-D and all, it also LOOKED LIKE A HIDEOUS BUG!! Threw the rest of the piece off-kilter. Why I didn't see this while in it, I don't know. Unfortunately when you catch an error at this stage, the only thing to do is to slice it out of the base. That was not a good day.
The brown furry thing is the cat, who is always in the way.
So I had a bug, and I had a big ass hole on the bottom right quad of my piece. I didn't take a picture of the hole because it was quite upsetting. It took a couple of weeks of glaring at it every day before the cloth began suggesting ways to make it all better.
