Basket Puzzle

Very few of the blocks here are appliquéd. I’m really not good at this method, so I rarely use it. Several blocks, like Birthday Cake (May 31) were paper-pieced. But nearly all the rest were made with traditional piecing methods. Most of these can be divided into four categories: nine-patch (a design divisible by two vertical and two horizontal lines, like tic-tac-toe), four-patch (with four quadrants: northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest), five-patch and seven-patch (you can figure it out). Mayberry Square (June 5) was a nine-patch. Captains’ Cabins (June 6) was a four-patch. Bright Jewel (May 24) was a five-patch and Don’t Feed the Bears (October 27) was a seven-patch. Today’s block doesn’t quite fit anywhere. The center is a square-in-a-square; a classic four-patch design. But the border around the outside is divisible by five. Doing the math to make it into a 12” block was a puzzle. That’s okay. I like puzzles.