Stitch, stitch, whirrrr. It’s always a wonder that humble thread can transform flimsy pieces of fabric into a new and wonderful whole. Patchwork is a just fabric mosaic, and thankfully our tools are much lighter and easier than stone and mortar.

Today I am chain-piecing these simple blocks into rows and rows. I sew without stopping to cut threads, just feeding one pair after the other under the needle. With chain piecing, you sew briefly through air between fabrics, causing a little thread chain to bridge the gap between each pair. Then separate the pairs with the thread-cutter notch on the side of most sewing machines - easy and fast!

It’s always intriguing to note how much the patchwork “shrinks” as the blocks are joined. Diamonds in particular tend to surprise me. I purposely made the quilt wider than seemed necessary on the design wall in order to balance out the seam-allowance loss for diamonds. We shall see if it ends up a square quilt, as I suspect.

These hexagons and triangles make honeycomb stars. Do you see? If I were to make this a pattern someday, that would surely be the name - Honeycomb Stars. Maybe with an option for a larger scale version, with bigger blocks? Hm, I think I would like to sew that as well!