Every Rose Has It's Thorns

 After making hundreds and hundreds of HSTs the last week or so- It's a top! 

I haven't actually measured it but it calculates to be 90.496 x 90.496.  (16 x 1.414 x 4)

Here's the bottom row you can't really see in the last photo. 

I started making 12 inch Rosebud blocks in solids of colors you might find in roses back in 2009. (My paper print of the pattern from Quilter's Cache tells me so).  Over the years I had made 49 blocks using rose themed fabrics in the background.  I was thinking I would just set the blocks in rows 7 x 7 and be done with it. 

But then that ugly olive green fabric with roses on it kept nagging me to be used as thorns. I had a lot of it and I normally don't have a lot of any one fabric. Thorns, huh? Okay...so if you remember a previous post you know I tried that olive green fabric paired up with some lime green fabric  and made some HSTs and they were yucky.  And yet that olive green rose themed fabric kept nagging to be used.  On and on it nagged  - a thorn in my side.   Ok...so I didn't have much of any one fabric to pair with the thorns so I used some of the pieces of neutral smaller flowered roses to make some HSTs.   The nagging stopped and sixteen inch blocks with Rosebuds and thorns were born. 

Then I decided to put blocks on point and had to decide what to do for side pieces.  For the on point setting I only needed 25 blocks and I had 49 so I decided to cut up 16 blocks for the side and corner pieces.   That was difficult for me to do since the blocks couldn't be cut exactly in half - they needed to have the extra 1/4 inch seam allowance which left me with a less than perfect half block left over.  But I just told myself the blocks weren't doing me any good just sitting around in a box for years either so cut and cut I did.   (I'll think of something to do with the leftovers). 

 Here's how the corner blocks looked after getting cut up.   Did I say that was very difficult for me to do? 

And I thought all was well and good until I went to take it down from the line and found some mutant thorns.   And so it goes. 

I have a couple of rose themed sheets I picked up long ago from the thrift store but don't remember the size of them. If one is big enough I'll use it for the backing. If not...I don't know what I'll use.  I do think I will try to quilt this on my DSM with some roses sans thorns.