It snowed most of the day in our neck of the woods.  Life in the high desert of Southern Oregon.  I spent  most of my day working on writing up some pattern instructions for you.  To make it easier and my time more productive I have written out some instructions for making things like the Hourglass units, and the Split Quarter-square Triangles and many others.  If you are doing the blocks with me you will want to download the pdf of General Instructions that is now available.  This will hopefully allow me to write up a simplified pattern to go with each day's block.  
Since I decided to tackle that monumental task I chose a simple block for today, the good ole nine-patch.  

Sometimes we just need simplicity in our lives.
My design wall is starting to fill with blocks.  There are even more projects on my wall but they are staying hidden for now.

Today I have a trick up my sleeve.  It's the Card Tricks block to celebrate my Day 18.

This one was much easier than yesterday, triangles do not scare me any more.

I almost passed on this particular block.  As I looked at it and how to construct it it became clear I would need to work with triangles-not my favorite thing.  But I stuck with it and figured out the sizes needed to make this block come to life and I am so glad I did.  So let me introduce you to Block 17: Buckwheat.  

There is a lot going on in this block so I will be giving some step-by-step instructions here today.  I was asked about providing pdf versions of these blocks.  My first response was it just takes too much time.  Then I decided to see how much time it would take-well, it took most of the day to make the block and write the pattern.  Since I am doing a block a day I cannot have my pattern testers look it over before I make it available either.  But I have done one for today.  Whether or not I ever do another remains to be seen, lol.  I do have to try to earn a living.

Digging in my scrap bins this is what I came up with.

I tell you, this man makes my heart sing.  Especially when he comes home from his solo shopping trip with these goodies for me.  We may have to look for joy right now, but sometimes it just comes along to cheer us on.

I continue to find joy in this daily process of making these 6" blocks.  The block for today is called Letter X.  More Hourglass units to practice on-I do think I am getting better at them.  I also enjoyed the kick off of a new blog hop today which I tell you about at the end of this post.

For this block I went with Cyan which is aquamarine blue.  I used two different values on Cyan and then wanted that center Hourglass to really pop so chose a Blue Red for that.  Red is one of those colors that will steal the show if you let it so using in a limited way adds some "pop" to a quilt.

I suppose it is no wonder that each of us have had our own connection to astronomy over the years working in the field in various ways.  My oldest has asked for another star quilt so here we go on an adventure to the stars together.

As I shared with you when I introduced this Block of the Month a few weeks ago I am making two versions of this quilt.  This is my first version of Block 1 which I have named Sirius for brightest star in our night sky.