As I worked away at the triangle blocks for the Escher quilt I ran into a snag – I could line up the first few blocks but then I had trouble finding the next in the series. I’m pretty sure my numbers will work – but I certainly had a problem somewhere.

I could align the dark circle fabric from the first to the second triangle, I could also align the join with the yellow fabric on the right (the 2nd and 3rd stack), and even match up the red fabric above that on the left, but I reached an impasse after the 5th block! The next matching block took me back to stack A at the bottom – which it shouldn’t have done. The stacks should line up in a continuous line – all 16 of them.

I finally figured out, after spending a large part of the morning pouring over pictures of the Escher quilt and checking that I’d set up the stacks according to the table I’d been able to create from what another quilter had posted, that the third set of blocks from the bottom was pieced counterclockwise instead of clockwise!

It turns out that four of the five finished stacks of triangles which build with the triangle on the right were sewn together counterclockwise – light strip attached to triangle, medium strip to that seam, dark strip to the remaining side – NOPE – should have been light attached to triangle, DARK next, and finally the medium – to give a clockwise rotation.

Out came my seam ripper. I disassembled four sets of (8) triangles; I restitched one. I’ll get to the remaining three tomorrow. I have my fingers crossed the numbers in the table I generated from photos are correct, and once I’ve resewn those three sets of triangles with the correct rotation, the remaining unsewn blocks (6) will align correctly once I’ve assesmbled them.

Here’s hoping!

Yesterday I organized my fabric into eight sets of three groupings – light, medium, dark. I cut 2″ strips from each and cut the trapezoid shapes (16 from each fabric) plus the small dark triangles for the centre of the block. (In a couple of blocks I ran out of fabric and had to fill in a couple of trapezoids with as close a colour match as I could – it will be interesting to see where they show up in the layout).

Next step was to group these trapezoids into groups of three for each block (a dark, a medium, a light). Before I did that I spent quite a bit of time looking at photos of the the quilt in progress which I found online in order to sort out the groupings. Then I set up the blocks – two sets – one which starts with the triangle on the right side of the light piece; the other with the triangle on the left side of the light piece.

These are the blocks with the triangle on the right. There is a complementary set with the triangle on the left.

In the afternoon I stitched block “A”, then block “B” and placed them together so the dark fabric forms the wide 120° angle – the two triangles at the bottom of the stack below. I also did the “C” stack but that triangle fits in somewhere else.

The next triangle needed to join the light vertical on the “B” block turned out to be block “M” followed by “L”, then “K”.

To see how this array would look like sewn together I stitched one of each together.

You can’t really see the optical illusion yet – I need to construct the second column and join it to column #1. At the moment I’ll continue constructing all the blocks then lay out the first column (it uses all 16 triangle blocks). I don’t yet know where the second column actually begins – the order of the blocks will be the same, but it will start at another place and until I get all the blocks stitched, I’m not going to know where column #2 begins.

In any case, I’ve set up a chart showing the fabrics in each triangle block – there are no duplicates, but the linkages become apparent. It will be a matter of just laying out the matching pieces to create the structure of the interlocked elements.

Now, it’s just a matter of carrying on with block construction. I’ve got six block sets done – that leaves a dozen to go and then I can set up the columns….